Nearly Half of US Women Don't Know Heart Disease Is Their No. 1 Killer

Contact Sally Stewart | sally.stewart@cshs.org

Los Angeles — June 22, 2017, Updated Oct. 9, 2017 — Heart disease is not a top health concern for women or their physicians, putting patients’ health and lives at greater risk, a study shows.

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, shows that 45 percent of U.S. women are not aware that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women. Even though the majority reported having a routine physical or wellness exam in the past year, only 40 percent reported having a heart health assessment by their healthcare provider.

Only 39 percent of primary care physicians surveyed for the study indicated that heart disease is a top health concern for their female patients, and only 35 percent bring up the topic during exams with new patients.

"We clearly have a lot of work to do to make women aware that heart disease is a bigger threat to their health than all types of cancer combined," said C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.

Patients aren’t the only ones in need of heart health education, said Bairey Merz, who led the study funded by the Women's Heart Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to women's heart health. Bairey Merz serves as a scientific adviser to the group.

"We also need to work with primary care physicians to make sure they understand how to… assess and treat women with heart disease, which often presents with different symptoms than does heart disease in men," she said.

Some of the data from the study was presented this year at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions. The data came from a survey of 1,011 U.S. women ages 25 to 60 and a separate survey of 200 physicians. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Results show:

• Only 22 percent of primary care physicians and 42 percent of cardiologists felt extremely well-prepared to assess heart disease in women, while 42 percent and 40 percent felt prepared, respectively.
• A majority of women reported having a routine physical or wellness exam, yet only 40 percent reported having a heart health assessment.
• Sixty-three percent of women admitted they sometimes put off going to the doctor, and 45 percent said they canceled or postponed a doctor appointment because they wanted to lose weight.
• While 74 percent reported having one or more heart disease risk factors, only 16 percent were informed by their physician that they were at risk.
• Twenty-six percent of women said having heart disease would be an embarrassment because others would assume the woman was not eating healthy or exercising.

"Eighty percent of heart disease and stroke is preventable, yet women's heart disease is underdiagnosed, under-researched and underfunded," said British A. Robinson, CEO of the Women's Heart Alliance. "It is critical that women ask their healthcare providers to check their hearts, and that healthcare providers know that when it comes to heart disease, men and women are different — women's hearts are smaller, their risk factors are different and their symptoms may be different. With so many lives at stake, we must make this a priority."

About the Women's Heart Alliance

The alliance was formed to raise awareness, encourage action and drive new research to fight women's heart disease. It is a collaboration between two of America's leading medical institutions — the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center — and two major philanthropists and leaders in business and entertainment, Barbra Streisand and Ronald O. Perelman. Learn more at the alliance's website and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Note: This news release was updated to reflect corrections made to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology article after the June 22 publication.

JACC’s "erratum" (list of corrections) can be found here.