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(Circulation. 1999;100:e114.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.

Circulation Electronic Pages

Women’s Heart Problems Are Poorly Understood

Ruth SoRelle, MPH, Circulation Newswriter

	Introduction

 
Why and when women develop heart disease is both poorly understood and studied, said experts at the 21st Congress of the European Society of Cardiology, held in Barcelona. "Men and women are similar with regard to risk factors," said John Martin, MD, of the University of London Cardiology Group.

These similar heart disease risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and age, said Dr Martin. Yet, he said, women with diabetes often have a higher risk of heart disease than men with diabetes. Women are also more likely to die of a first heart attack than men.

As with men, death rates from heart disease in women vary from country to country. Heart disease death rates for women are lowest in Spain and highest in Scotland, he said. Again, as with men, this variation in rates is not well-understood.

Even more puzzling are the variations in death rates, particularly in the acute phase just after a heart attack, when the patient is hospitalized. In a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, (Vaccarino et al. Sex-Based Differences in Early Mortality After Myocardial Infarction. 1999;341:217–225), the study’s author, Viola Vaccarino, MD, and her colleagues found that younger women had an increased risk of death during hospitalization after a myocardial infarction than men of the same age. Previously, it had been thought that women were more likely to die soon after a heart attack because they tended to be older than their male counterparts. However, said Dr . . . [Full Text of this Article]