More than 9.5 million women have heart disease. Each year 250,000 die as a result. In addition to modifying traditional risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure, women can reduce their risk of a cardiac event by 50 percent by estrogen replacement therapy, according to Steven Reis, M.D. , center director.
Prevention also includes weight loss and smoking cessation.
Recent studies have demonstrated that women with coronary heart disease present to their physicians with complaints that are atypical compared with those of men. For instance, chest pain in men is usually caused by atherosclerosis. In women, chest pain may be due to abnormal, transient coronary artery spasms. In addition, a woman's prognosis after an acute cardiac event is substantially worse than that of a man. Women have been under-represented in all major CHF trials over the past decade.