Heart Disease: A Silent and REAL Threat to Women
When we think of the diseases that are most prevalent in society, most of us think of cancer. For women, breast cancer is the disease that looms large in our fears. However, it is heart disease which kills more women than any other disease each year. More than 400,000 women each year in the United States will die of cardiovascular disease. Experts estimate that 1 in 2 women will die of cardiovascular disease (e.g., heart attack and stroke) versus the 1 in 25 women who is likely to die of breast cancer. However, heart disease still remains an underestimated disease, and one whose gravity is lost on most women.
I work in the health care field, and deal with cardiovascular disease on a daily basis. It never fails to amaze me how women (and men!) downplay this disease. When discussing medication therapies, I find many people saying to me “oh, I only take a little blood pressure pill, it’s no big deal”. If I had a dollar for the number of times I have tried to convey the seriousness of heart disease to a woman, I would be rich! Inevitably, I get the glazed-eye gaze, the inevitable head nodding, but I suspect not much of what I say takes hold. It’s only when someone experiences a catastrophic event, say a heart attack, that the level of seriousness of this disease begins to sink in. We women are constantly trying to multi-task, trying to juggle our domestic, work and social duties, oblivious to the atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) happening right inside our bodies.
The 10Q Report, published by the National Coalition for Women With Heart Disease, highlights the severity of this issue for women. According to this report, women are 1.5 times more likely than men to die within the first year after having a heart attack. Women with angina (chest pain related to coronary artery disease) have twice the morbidity and mortality as their male counterparts. Further, women have had coronary artery bypass surgery have twice the mortality rate as men. Despite overall morbidity and mortality rates of coronary heart disease having decreased among women and men, the mortality rate among women under the age of 55 is actually increasing.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati