Over the past decade, new studies have revealed that women s heart attacks manifest in unique and subtle ways. Also, it s been learned that women s risk factors are different. Having received little training in women s heart disease, doctors are unprepared to counsel women on prevention, to monitor them for risks, and to diagnose their heart disease accurately. Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a cardiologist at his New England Heart Center, in Manchester, Conn., and author of Heart Sense for Women, reflects, I never saw a woman in the cardiac-care unit when I was in medical school. Back in the 70s, he didn t consider that women got heart disease, because he didn t see them.
Statistics suggest the latter.
Since 1984, more women than men have died of cardiovascular diseases. Sinatra says that unintentional collusion exists between women and doctors about heart disease. Then, if the diagnosis is delayed you have a disaster on your hands. Denial on both sides of the stretcher makes a deadly situation, he says. Jane Natale, a retired Warwick, R.I., banker, walked around for days not realizing she had had a heart attack.