The AHA also unveiled a national survey of 1000 women ages 25 and older in which fewer than one third said they had discussed heart disease with a physician. Now we're learning a lot about the prevalence of heart disease and the benefits of treatment. This statement shares what we've learned. Because they present with heart disease at later ages, women are also more likely to have coexisting conditions that can reduce survival.
Women often present cardiac symptoms late, when the disease has progressed.
You need to screen for the disease and then aggressively treat women who are at risk. Prevention, of course, is the best approach. These factor affect both men and women at roughly the same rate. Other risk factors disproportionately affect women. Diabetes, for example, raises a woman's risk for CHD three to seven times above normal while causing only a two- to threefold increased risk for men.