Women & Heart Disease

Know the Facts
It is surprising to many that the number one cause of death in women is not cancer– it’s heart disease. In fact, heart disease kills one out of every three American women. Yet it is not diagnosed and treated with the same frequency as it is in men.

*Number of deaths are rounded to the nearest thousand. Source: The Healthy Heart Handbook for Women, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institure (2003).

• More than 6.6 million American women have heart disease.
• 1 in 5 women has some form of cardiovascular disease.
• Approximately 35% of women who have had a heart attack will have another within 6 years.
• Half of women who have a heart attack will be disabled with heart failure within 6 years.
• 1 in 2 women will die of heart disease or stroke.
• 62% of women don’t receive follow-up treatment after a positive angiogram (i.e. lesion detected), compared with 37.7% of men.
• Since 1984, the number of cardiovascular disease deaths in females has exceeded those for males by more than 67,000 per year.
• 63% of women who died suddenly of coronary heart disease did not experience symptoms prior to death.
• Women were previously excluded (or under-represented) from clinical trials for lipid-lowering therapies.