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"Women and Heart Disease": Interview with Shirley White

Women and Heart Disease Fact Sheet

Prevalence:

8,000,000 American women are currently living with heart disease - 10% of women ages 45 - 64 and 25% age 65 and over.
6,000,000 of women today have a history of heart attack and/or angina or both.
Nearly 13% of women age 45 and over have had a heart attack.
435,000 American women have heart attacks each year; 83,000 are under age 65 and 9,000 are under age 45. Their average age is 70.4.
4,000,000 women suffer from angina, and 47,000 of them were hospitalized in 1999.

Mortality:

Heart disease is the leading cause of death of American women and kills 32% of them.
43% of deaths in American women, or nearly 500,000, are caused by cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) each year.
267,000 women die each year from heart attacks, which kill six times as many women as breast cancer.
31,837 women die each year of congestive heart failure, or 62.6% of all heart failure deaths.

At-Risk:

The age-adjusted rate of heart disease for African American women is 72% higher than for white women, while African American women ages 55 - 64 are twice as likely as white women to have had a heart attack and 35% more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease.
Women who smoke risk having a heart attack 19 years earlier than non-smoking women.
Women with diabetes are two to three times more likely to have heart attacks.
High blood pressure is more common in women taking oral contraceptives, especially in obese women.

Compared with Men:

38% of women and 25% of men will die within one year of a first recognized heart attack.
35% of women and 18% of men heart attack survivors will have another heart attack within six years.
Women are almost twice as likely as men to die after bypass surgery.
Women are less likely than men to receive beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors or even aspirin after a heart attack.
More women than men die of heart disease each year, yet women receive only:
- 33% of angioplasties, stents and bypass surgeries
- 28% of implantable defibrillators and
- 36% of open-heart surgeries
Women comprise only 25% of participants in all heart-related research studies.

Statistics complied from: National Center on Health Statistics; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; and American Heart Association's 2002 Heart and Stroke Statistical Update

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