• Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death for American women.

• In 1997, cardiovascular disease (CVD) claimed the lives of more than 502,938 women in the United States. In comparison, breast cancer killed 41,943 women in 1997.

• Almost 500,000 people died of heart attacks and other coronary events in 1997; of those victims, 228,769 (49.1 percent) were women.

• More than one in five women has some form of heart or blood vessel disease.

• About 42 percent of women who have a heart attack die within 1 year, compared with 24 percent of men.

• During the first 6 years after a heart attack, 33 percent of women will have a second attack compared with 21 percent of men.

• The death rate for coronary heart disease in 1997 was 14.6 percent higher for African-American women than for white women, and African-American women’s death rate for stroke was 31.4 percent higher than the rate for white women.

• Studies show that women smokers who use oral contraceptives are more likely to have a heart attack and are much more likely to have a stroke than are nonsmokers who use birth control pills.

• According to a 1995 Gallup survey, 88 percent of primary care physicians were not aware that women’s heart attack symptoms may differ greatly from men’s symptoms.

• Emergency room physicians miss the signs of heart attack in women under 55 in 7 percent of cases, whereas male patients are misdiagnosed in 2 percent of cases, according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

• Women die in the hospital at a higher rate than men after a heart attack. Studies point to the fact that women receive much less aggressive treatment than men (for example, cardiac catheterization, aspirin, or beta-blockers).

Reference
"Women and Coronary Heart Disease," American Heart Association, 2002.

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