Heart disease often misdiagnosed in women

[Cheba_Mami]

When Jean Horgan complained of heart palpitations, her doctor told her it was just nerves.

"I was told, 'Go home and take tranquilizers. You'll be fine, you're under stress.' "

Much later, another doctor -- one specializing in women's health -- ordered an echocardiogram, an ultrasound test of her heart. The echo showed Horgan had a heart condition, and she needed medication.

When Phyllis Cruz went to the emergency room, she told the nurse she felt as if she was having a heart attack. She said the nurse didn't believe her.

"I said to her, 'But I have pain, chest pain. I can't breathe.' She said, 'Well, there's a lot of people here. Sit down.' "

Six hours later, Cruz also was given an EKG. It turned out she did have a heart attack.

Eventually Cruz turned to Nieca Goldberg, a New York cardiologist who specializes in women. Her patients' biggest complaint is that their doctors haven't taken them seriously.

"And you know what? Most of the time they're right," said Goldberg, author of "The Women's Healthy Heart Program."

Statistics bear Goldberg out. "Research shows that women may not be diagnosed or treated as aggressively as men," says the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

For example, even though more women than men die of heart disease each year, women receive 33 percent of all angioplasties, stents and bypass surgeries; 28 percent of implantable defibrillators; and 36 percent of open-heart surgeries, according to the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.

These figures may help explain why 75 percent of men survive a first heart attack, while only 62 percent of women do, according to the American Heart Association.

The National Institutes of Health and other groups aim to change these statistics by raising awareness with events such as Friday's National Wear Red Day.

They'll be calling for more research on women and heart disease, since about 25 percent of subjects in cardiac studies are female. And according to a new report from the Mayo Clinic, most of these studies don't segregate statistics by gender, so it's hard to learn much about women and heart disease. That's a key factor because the disease acts differently in men from the way it does in women.

First lady Laura Bush, an ambassador for the National Institutes of Health's heart awareness program, is scheduled to take part Friday in the fifth annual Red Dress Collection fashion show in New York. A part of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the event brings out celebrity models in red dresses from American designers.

Much of National Wear Red Day's purpose is to change attitudes. The event seems to be making some inroads. According to a 2005 survey, 55 percent of American women were aware that heart disease is the leading killer of women, up from 34 percent in 2000.

But the question remains: Are doctors changing?

Goldberg recalled that when she was in medical school, "They showed us a picture of the typical patient with heart disease, and it was a middle-aged businessman, clutching his chest."

Perhaps now medical students will see a photo of a woman in a red dress.

read more on: Heart disease often misdiagnosed in women - CNN.com

[Bent_Bladi]

outrageous!!! .... yallah, we need more woman doctors so we can start plotting our super evil revenge.........!!

[liberte]

US researchers say they have developed a more accurate method of predicting if a woman is at risk of heart disease.

Current methods were developed 40 years ago and often fail to pick up women who are at risk.

The Reynolds Risk Score considers more than just traditional risk factors such as age, blood pressure, cholesterol level and smoking.

Featured in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it aims to predict the 10-year risk of heart disease.


Many women don't recognise heart disease as being an issue for them
Judy O'Sullivan
British Heart Foundation

New factors taken into consideration include parental history of heart attack before the age of 60, and levels of C-reactive protein, which has been linked to clogged arteries and damage to blood vessels in the heart.

The researchers, from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, hope their work will lead to more at-risk women being identified and offered drugs, and lifestyle interventions to reduce their risk.

They found that the current risk assessment measures failed to spot up to 20% of women who suffered from heart disease, but did not display any of the traditional risk factors.

Women reassessed

When they applied the new system, they found many women rated under the old measures of having a 10-year risk of heart disease of less than 20% had to be reclassified. In some the risk was increased, but in others it came down.

Roger Blumenthal from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, welcomed the new assessment system.

He said: "Physicians should incorporate these factors into their testing and decision-making about which women are most likely to develop cardiovascular disease.

"And physicians should intervene with lifestyle changes and drug treatment before symptoms start to appear.

"Our best means of prevention is through early identification of those most at risk."

Judy O'Sullivan, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said it was not standard practice to take account of C-reactive protein levels during assessment in primary care in the UK.

She said various assessment methods were used in the UK, but none was perfect.

The key, she said, was to get women to present themselves for assessment in the first place.

"Many women don't recognise heart disease as being an issue for them," she said.

"In women it tends to be an older person's disease, and quite often women have developed other conditions which can cause pain, such as diabetes, by the time they develop heart problems, so they put any pain down to something else."

BBC NEWS | Health | Heart risk pinned down for women

[Cheba_Mami]

thanks, just keep an eye on your female relatives and friends, ok ladies?