Heart disease is the leading cause of hospitalization and death among midlife and older women. The condition increases with age and is more widespread among African-American women than among white women. One in nine women between the ages of 45 and 64 has some form of heart disease. One in three women age 65 and older has heart disease. Heart disease was the leading diagnosis for women age 45 and older who were discharged from hospitals in 1991.
Women are the victims of half of all fatal heart attacks each year.
When heart disease is suspected, your healthcare provider should conduct a thorough physical examination, listen carefully to your hear, and take a chest x-ray. When heart failure is suspected, echocardiography uses sound waves to make images of your heart and its chambers. In addition to that non-invasive test, radionuclide ventriculography tracks how low doses of an injected radioactive substance travels through the heart. If you have chest pain due to a blockage in the coronary arteries, cardiac angiography is used to pinpoint exactly where the blockage is. Take responsibility for your health care.