Heart disease differs in women and men

Heart dis­ease his­tor­i­cally has been viewed as a “male dis­ease,” but now we know bet­ter. In fact, heart dis­ease is the No. 1 killer of women. Yet, only 1 in 5 women believe that it is her great­est health threat.

This Fri­day kicks off National Heart Month and marks the 10th anniver­sary of the Amer­i­can Heart Association’s Go Red for Women cam­paign, which has helped increase aware­ness of heart dis­ease in women from symp­toms to prevention.

Since the Go Red for Women cam­paign began in 2004, the AHA esti­mates that it has helped save more than 627,000 lives. Over the next eight years, the goal is to reduce the num­ber of car­dio­vas­cu­lar deaths among all Amer­i­cans by 20 percent.

It’s a real­is­tic goal espe­cially if women and men rec­og­nize heart attack symp­toms and seek emer­gency treat­ment in a timely man­ner. Unfor­tu­nately, many women still believe that their gen­der low­ers their heart attack risk; they too often dis­miss the warn­ing signs and fail to act quickly enough on them.

A heart attack occurs when a clot forms in the artery, pre­vent­ing the flow of blood to the heart mus­cle. If the blood flow is not restored quickly, the affected part of the heart mus­cle begins to die.

Physi­cians often use the phrase “time is mus­cle” because the amount of dam­age to the heart mus­cle depends, in part, on the time between injury and treat­ment. Min­i­miz­ing dam­age to the heart can improve recov­ery, pre­vent future com­pli­ca­tions and, in many cases, save lives.

Some heart attacks are sud­den and intense, but most start slowly with mild pain and dis­com­fort. As a con­se­quence, peo­ple fail to rec­og­nize the warn­ing signs and post­pone the need for help. When in doubt, call 9–1-1. Don’t feel embar­rassed if it is a false alarm.

We now know that women and men often expe­ri­ence heart attack symp­toms dif­fer­ently. A pri­mary pur­pose of the Go Red for Women cam­paign is to raise aware­ness about the warn­ing signs in women.

Heart attack symp­toms for women and men include chest dis­com­fort, dis­com­fort in other areas of the upper body, short­ness of breath, nau­sea, light­head­ed­ness and break­ing out in a cold sweat.

Pres­sure that feels like an ele­phant sit­ting across the chest is a clas­sic sign of a heart attack, but women are more likely than men to expe­ri­ence the other symp­toms with­out chest pres­sure. These symp­toms also can include fatigue, sleep dis­tur­bances and indi­ges­tion. In some cases, women might expe­ri­ence short­ness of breath that feels like they just ran a marathon, or upper back pres­sure that feels like a rope has been tied around them.

A heart attack strikes some­one in the United States every 34 sec­onds, but many women espe­cially are unsure of the symp­toms. That’s why the Go Red for Women cam­paign is so impor­tant – to high­light the risk among women and let them know about the sub­tle and some­times con­fus­ing warn­ing signs that char­ac­ter­ize their gender.

Heart Month is a great time to make sure you and/or the impor­tant women in your life know those symp­toms and call 9–1-1 if they expe­ri­ence them.

Dr. Abra­ham C. Parail is a board-certified inter­ven­tional car­di­ol­o­gist and an active mem­ber of the Grady Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal med­ical staff.

Posted by Grady Memorial Hospital on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.