Rising Heart Diseases among Women (Guest Blog- Dr Zakia Khan)

Rising Heart Diseases among Women

 

Case Study

A 42 year old female, working in a Government office, had to travel everyday by train from her residence at Kalyan to Nariman point. She started noticing that she became progressively breathless while taking the flight of stairs on her way to board the train. She was lean, 55kg and had no risk factors. She underwent a routine health checkup at Fortis, Kalyan and to her disbelief her stress test turned out to be strongly positive. It was a further shock to the family after a Coronary Angiogram revealed that she had critical Double Vessel Disease. Subsequently, a Two Vessel Angioplasty was performed on her and now she is clinically better and her effort tolerance has significantly improved. The patient had arrived at the right time which prevented any grave complication that might have arisen if any more time would have been lost with the patient progressively moving towards grave physical complications.

 

Heart Diseases and Women

Heart disease is the number one killer for both males and females in US today. Every 80 seconds a woman dies from heart disease and more than 3 quarters of these heart related deaths are preventable. While 80% of all females have atleast one risk factor for heart disease, most women do not consider heart disease to be their greatest health risk. 60% of Indian urban woman in the age group of 30-35 are at a risk of heart disease and most doctors observe that there is a 16-20% rise in Cardiovascular Disease (CVDs) among women in last 5 years. World Health Organization (WHO) targets to reduce premature death from CVD by 25% by 2025 in Southeast Asia region. While overall death rates from heart disease have declined over the last 20 years, death rates in women still outpace those in men. Earlier this year The American Heart Association (AHA) released a new scientific statement on Women and Heart Disease. AHA recognized that many times heart attacks in women have different causes and symptoms compared to those in men and women who develop heart attacks have higher complication and death rates during the first year after a cardiac event. February, this year was designated as “Go Red for Women” month. Its purpose was to raise awareness about heart disease in women and promote engagements in such a way that thousands of unnecessary and preventable cardiac deaths can be prevented. I think there is a similar need in India to start a campaign as most women generally think more about Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer. However, more women die from heart disease than from Breast and Lung Cancer combined together. Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women while heart disease affects 1 in 3 women.