Wear red to support the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women movement.
Heart disease is still the major cause of death for women in America. Actually, it's the leading cause of death overall in America, and stroke is number three. But the reason the Heart Association pulls a day out of Heart Month to highlight women and heart disease is because the assessment and treatment for women lags behind that of men.
For example:
Cardiac imaging methods such as stress single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and stress echocardiography work as well in women as in men to accurately diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD). Women at risk for CAD, however, are less often referred for the right tests, according to a consensus statement from the American Heart Association.
It's a similar story for percutaneous coronary interventions (like balloon angioplasty and stenting to open blocked arteries), which are done in men much more routinely than in women.
And women are less likely than men to receive recommendations from their doctors for preventive therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin therapy and cardiac rehabilitation to protect them against heart attacks and death.
(Source: AHA press releases, 1 Feb 05)
But the quote from here that really struck with me was this:
In addition, women usually delay seeking treatment, so much so that women who have heart attacks will seek help 30 to 60 minutes later than their male counterparts.
So I'm supporting the Go Red campaign and doing what I can to help get the word out. Women clearly need to be proactive about heart disease. Do you know if you're at risk? Find out. Are you at risk? Mitigate it. Do you know how to recognize a heart attack or stoke? What would you do if you were having one? Read this.
Waiting is not going to do you any good.
Posted by Nic at February 4, 2005 01:00 AM