A professional acquaintance of mine recently died of a heart attack. While the death was difficult for me and my colleagues, it was far more difficult to understand WHY it happened. She was a Chinese woman in her early 40's with no known history of heart disease. She was fine all weekend and by Sunday she was dead.
Coincidently, an article entitled "Heart disease often misdiagnosed in women" has just been published by Elizabeth Cohen at CNN Health.
In the article Elizabeth explains how heart attacks in women are often not taken seriously by health professionals, are often misdiagnosed and tend to receive less aggressive treatment than in male counterparts.
This may explain why "75 percent of men survive a first heart attack, while only 62 percent of women do, according to the American Heart Association."
More heart disease research is done on male subjects and as a result, more is know about the symptoms and risk factors for heart disease in men than in women.
Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in women and more women than men die of the disease each year. Hopefully, these statistics will change over time. Organizations like the National Institutes of Health are working to improve these statistics by raising awareness and increasing research in the field.
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