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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Women's Health Experts Update Congress on
Cardiovascular Advances
Heart disease is still the leading killer of American
women
 Feb. 15, 2007 - Despite technological gains in
heart disease diagnosis and treatment, experts say women are still
under represented in heart studies and researchers do not regularly
provided needed information about differences in the disease between
women and men, according to the Society for Womens Health Research.
Representatives met Monday with cardiovascular experts on Capitol Hill
to tell congressional staff members about advances in cardiac care for
women, including imaging techniques and heart-assisting devices.
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The briefing was designed to provide congressional
staff members with information to support their health care policy work.
The Society was first to focus attention on the
incidence of heart disease in women, long thought of as a mans
disease," said Phyllis Greenberger, M.S.W., president and CEO of the
Society for Women's Health Research, a Washington, D.C., based advocacy
organization.
"While it is true that men generally suffer from
heart disease at an earlier age, it was not recognized until recently
that women suffer from heart disease in greater numbers than men later
in life. As a result, women were often misdiagnosed, mistreated, or
ignored.
Significant gains for women in heart disease have
been made over the last 15 years, but a lot of work remains to be done,
she added.
Heart disease deaths in women dropping
Susan Bennett, M.D., clinical director of the
Womens Heart Program in the Cardiovascular Center at George Washington
University in Washington, D.C., reviewed the past 10 years of research
on women and heart disease. Pointing to recently released data on
cardiovascular deaths, Bennett said that the number of women dying from
heart disease dropped 17,000 from 2003 to 2004.
To put that in perspective, heart disease went
from causing 33 percent of deaths to causing 25 percent of deaths in
women, Bennett said, but heart disease is still the leading killer of
American women.
Bennett speculated that one reason why women have
higher mortality rates with cardiovascular disease is because cardiac
procedures and devices are severely under-utilized in women patients
compared to men patients. Women receive only 40 percent of all cardiac
catheterizations and only 20 percent of all implanted pacemakers.
Bennett emphasized that health care professionals need to reduce current
disparities between women and men and collect data so that better
treatments can be developed.
Leslee Shaw, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the
Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga., spoke about the
dramatic improvements made in cardiovascular imaging. According to Shaw,
using a CAT scan to detect calcium buildup in arteries is a great step
in improving the detection of heart disease in women.
We know that women have smaller arteries, so it
will take less calcium buildup to block those arteries, Shaw said, than
it would in men. This test allows us to view the amount of calcium
buildup to determine if a woman is at risk.
Coronary Computed Tomography Angiogram
Shaw discussed Coronary Computed Tomography
Angiogram, a new, non-invasive heart-imaging test that can take pictures
of a heart that a cardiologist can view from many angles. The images
allow a cardiologist to see if calcium or plaque deposits have built up
in the coronary arteries by rotating the images and viewing blockages
from different perspectives. Shaw said the test is very promising, but
there is no sex-specific data regarding women and the procedure, which
prevents its optimal utilization.
Devices for patients waiting for a heart
transplant
Margarita Camacho, M.D., surgical director of the
cardiac transplant and mechanical assist device program at the Saint
Barnabas Heart Center at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark,
N.J., spoke about heart devices created for patients waiting for a heart
transplant. With 400,000 heart disease patients waiting for new hearts
and only 2,100 transplants being done, ventricular assist devices are a
necessity for many patients, Camacho said.
Ventricular assist devices (VADs) take over the
pumping mechanism for hearts that are too weak to pump on their own.
Patients will often use a VAD for weeks while waiting for a transplant.
Luckily for women, these devices are becoming more compact and better
able to fit into a womans smaller chest cavity.
The event was made possible with support from Abiomed, Edwards
Lifesciences, GE Healthcare, and The Medicines Company.
Source:
Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR)
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