Heart Disease in Women

Ezra Amsterdam; L. Newby; Jeffrey Borer

Heart Disease in Women

Moderator:

Ezra A. Amsterdam, MD

UC Davis

Discussants:

Date: July 26, 2012

Roundtable ID: CV11945

Citation: Med Roundtable Cardiovasc Ed. ; 3(3): 175 - 182.

Summary:
Dr. Ezra Amsterdam from the University of California Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA moderated the topic "Heart Disease in Women" with Drs. Jeffrey Borer from the Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY, and L. Kristin Newby from Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC.

The discussion focused primarily on:

(1) The underdiagnosis and undertreatment of coronary heart disease in women

(2) gaps in treatment: lower use of evidence based therapies in women

(3) the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials

(4) the differences in coronary heart disease pathophysiology, symptoms and risk factors in women versus men

(5) diagnostic tests for coronary heart disease in women versus men

(6) diastolic dysfunction and the effects of hypertension in women.

(Med Roundtable Cardiovasc Ed. 2012;3(3):175–182) ©2012 FoxP2Media, LLC

Compounds:
No compounds discussed.

Trials:
INTERHEART, Framingham Heart Study, SHIFT, PARTNER

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"If you look at the curve of the decrease in mortality from heart disease for the past 50 years in this country, there is a steady downtrend. But when we break up the data … it indicated that women did not benefit until the last decade."
Ezra A. Amsterdam, MD

"The fact is that the disease is different in women than in men. Whether that accounts for some of the difference in outcomes that we see I don't know, but the disease is different."
Jeffrey Borer, MD

"I think most of them suggest that we have underappreciated the risk of heart disease in women, and in part that's because women do develop coronary artery disease later in life or the consequences of coronary artery disease are manifest later in life. I think every signal tells us that we are doing better, including physicians’ perception of risk and treatment."
L. Kristin Newby, MD