Heart disease a leading cause of death for women yet they are more likely than men to dismiss pain and delay seeking medical help

When heart symptoms strike, men and women go through similar stages of pain but women are more likely to delay seeking care and can put their health at risk, according to a study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress.

"The main danger is that when someone comes to the hospital with a more severe or advanced stage of heart disease, there are simply fewer treatment options available," says Dr. Catherine Kreatsoulas, lead author of the study and a Fulbright Scholar and Heart and Stroke Foundation Research Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Kreatsoulas, an epidemiologist, says we don't know enough about how people perceive their heart symptoms and at what stage they are prompted to seek medical care. Her study included patients with suspected coronary artery disease, just prior to undergoing their first coronary angiogram test.

Sometimes a "natural part of life" needs a little bit of expert knowledge and understanding to better cope with changes. In the Washington Post article Treating menopausal symptoms: What you need to know by Janice Lynch Schuster on October 13 2014, she contrasts her activities surrounding understanding the onset of menstruation with her unpreparedness for the changes of menopause.

Some key comments in the article show the consequences of the Women’s Health Initiative (For more information see Women’s Health Initiative Update 2013) where the conclusions drawn back in 2002 led to an 80% drop in hormone therapy prescriptions worldwide(1).

From Treating menopausal symptoms: What you need to know 

...The more current analyses of the Women’s Health Initiative data, along with other recent studies, indicate that for women in their 50s, just entering menopause, HT is a relatively safe treatment that can be used for up to five years and is not associated with an increased risk of heart disease (although women should still be screened and treated for risk factors, such as high blood pressure and breast cancer)...

...Richard J. Santen, president of the Endocrine Society, says that following the 2002 findings from the Women’s Health Initiative, which indicated that hormone therapy was harming women, prescriptions for it fell by 80 percent worldwide. At the same time, he says, medical training programs began to overlook training new doctors how to care for menopausal women...

...“For someone who has been debilitated by symptoms, you need to find a doctor who will really talk to you and listen to your concerns. The doctor should assess your risk factors and understand the benefits and risks you face. Right now, people just don’t know enough about the data, and it is easier for doctors not to prescribe at all,” Chang says...