Online A free and confidential service of Yale-New Haven Hospital. Using your own criteria, you can request information from a database of 900 area physicians who have registered to participate. We would be happy to assist you in scheduling an appointment with a member of the hospital's medical staff. Younger women at higher risk of dying after heart attacks Heart disease is the number one killer of women. Each year all cardiovascular diseases combined claim the lives of more than 500,000 women in the U.S. compared to all forms of cancer, which kill about 258,000 women.
Heart disease is the number one killer of women.
Women develop heart disease at the same rate as men do, but they often show evidence of the disease 10 years later than their male counterparts. As women approach menopause, their risk of heart disease begins to approach that of men. This year, nearly 50 million women in the U.S. are older than 50, and the percentage of postmenopausal women in our society is rising as the baby boomers become senior boomers. For the last decade, many medical researchers have focused on women and heart disease, examining gender differences in an effort to discover the most effective ways to treat increasing numbers of women heart disease patients. Several of these studies have looked at how well women do after experiencing heart attacks compared with men.