North Shore LIJ

February 13, 2012

Women, Know Your Heart Disease Risk!

Suzanne Steinbaum, DO

If you’re a woman, heart disease is your greatest health threat so knowing your risk is essential. 

How you live can have serious consequences. For instance, atherosclerosis (plaque in the arteries) builds up when there is damage to the lining of the arteries, frequently due to lifestyle. But high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, obesity, sedentary habits and stress are all factors we can control through diet, and exercise and stress management.

Family health history is also significant. The risk for cardiac disease goes up for women whose father had heart disease at 55 or younger or whose mother had heart disease at 65 or younger. The greatest risk is if a sibling has developed atherosclerosis or has suffered a cardiac event like a heart attack.

Prevention is key, since heart disease is often harder to detect and treat for women. That’s because women’s heart attacks often look different than the crushing central chest pain typically depicted in movies or TV. Instead, women may complain of shortness of breath, jaw pain, back pain, nausea, fatigue or even flu-like symptoms. Such varied symptoms may delay diagnosis and treatment.

Before symptoms can develop, get a diagnosis--especially if you are Full Post - to Detail View

October 21, 2011

Heart Disease in Women: Which Test Is Best?

Jennifer Mieres, MD

Heart disease due to coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death of women in the United States. Women with heart disease are more likely than men to have more complications and a higher death rate. So early, accurate diagnosis is critical to prevent death from heart attack.

Exercise testing remains the most widely accessible and relatively inexpensive method for initial evaluation of suspected coronary disease and for assessment of its severity. Despite its commonplace use, there are reports of limited accuracy in diagnosing heart disease in at-risk women. So should women take the plain treadmill exercise stress test or is there a benefit to the more costly test of exercise testing combined with cardiac imaging--that is, exercise myocardial perfusion imaging, also known as a nuclear stress test?

During the What Is the Optimal Method for Ischemia Evaluation in Women (WOMEN) trial, my colleagues and I compared the plain exercise treadmill stress test to the nuclear stress test to evaluate 800 women with symptoms suggestive of heart disease who could exercise. All women could walk on the treadmill for at least six minutes. Half had only the plain exercise treadmill stress test and the other half were evaluated with exercise stress testing combined with myocardial perfusion imaging.

The women were followed for two years and evaluated for heart attacks, continued chest pain and cardiac death. Trial results, published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, showed that an initial evaluation using only the exercise stress test provided two-year outcomes similar to those women who underwent the exercise nuclear stress test.

The bottom line: The plain exercise treadmill stress test should be the first test of choice for women with complaints suggestive of heart disease who can exercise for at least six minutes on a treadmill. Full Post - to Detail View

February 24, 2011

Go Red Every Day

Jean Cacciabaudo, MD

Life is hectic – juggling the schedules of your family, perhaps your parents and even your own commitments. One day you develop a sensation like a sudden weight on your chest. How long would you wait to seek medical attention? Would you stop and call your doctor for an appointment? Would you know that these symptoms are associated with heart disease?

Nearly 83 women die from heart disease and stroke each day in New York. In 2007, heart disease alone was the leading cause of death in our state accounting for 26,511 female deaths. The American Heart Association’s national Go Red for Women campaign is designed to alert people about heart disease and empower women to take charge of their heart health. North Shore-LIJ Health System has long supported the American Heart Association’s efforts by educating, diagnosing and treating women to prevent and reduce the number of deaths related to heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases.
 

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