Not many people are aware that compared to all kinds of cancers combined, more women all over the world actually die from heart attack and stroke. Cardiovascular or heart disease is a broad term used for a range of diseases affecting the heart and blood vessels. Since 1992, CVD has overtaken infectious diseases as a top cause of death among women, with one in every three females dying of heart disease, stroke and other CVDs as compared to one in every 30 females who die of cancer.
This fact was shared by St. Luke’s Medical Center-QC Assistant Medical Director Dr. Maria Adelaida Iboleon-Dy during a recent media roundtable discussion that also had Philippine Heart Association immediate past president Dr. Joel Abanilla and Abbott Diagnostics Senior Medical Director Dr. Agim Beshiri as resource persons.
The female population account for 50 percent of the 16.5 million cardiovascular deaths that occur globally every year, Dr. Iboleon-Dy said. Studies also indicate that while males are more prone to attacks – with those from age 61 to 70 at most risk of acute coronary syndrome – a bigger percentage of women than men die within one year of a heart attack.
In the Philippines an aggravating factor is the reluctance of women to have themselves diagnosed. Add to that the fact that they seem to have a higher tolerance of pain – describing the pain as “mild” or “moderate” compared to men who describe it as “severe” when they experience the same level of pain. Chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack although shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting as well as pain in the back or the jaw are also additional indicators.
“Every year since 1984, more women than men have died of heart disease because women are more difficult to diagnose partly because women are not as likely to get appropriate treatment following a first heart attack,” Dr. Iboleon-Dy revealed.
One other factor that makes it difficult to accurately diagnose if women are undergoing an attack is that the traditional troponin tests failed to take gender into consideration. Cardiac troponin is a protein that can indicate injury to the heart muscle. Troponin levels increase when heart cells are damaged, and doctors use blood tests to detect changes in these troponin kevels to help diagnose a heart attack
“Medical institutions have been using troponin tests without looking at gender,” avers Dr. Beshiri, adding that there are different values between men and women, and the values for the latter are lower. Old coefficient variations of existing troponin tests have 20 times more probability of having wrong diagnosis, since contemporary tests do not discriminate between men and women. As a result, about half or 50 percent of women showing up with chest pain to the emergency department have a possibility of being misdiagnosed as not suffering from or not about to have a heart attack.
But the good news is that the new assay developed by Abbott – the Architect Stat High Sensitive Troponin-I (hsTnI) test – can precisely measure very low levels of cardiac troponin. A study published in the Lancet on the use of Abbott’s hsTnI test in hospital emergency departments also suggests that doctors may rule out (or determine) heart attacks faster by using a newly identified troponin testing level – which could result in the discharge of two-thirds of patients with chest pains.
A study published in the British Medical Journal also suggests that Abbott’s hsTnI test may help pick up twice as many women’s heart attacks compared to standard blood tests. The “evolutionary” new test can also help physicians evaluate within 2-4 hours if a patient is having a heart attack – instead of the usual six to 12 hours that it takes before an accurate diagnosis can be made – and decreases the need for unnecessary procedures, not to mention unnecessary hospital admissions.
For more information about heart health, visit www.abbott.com and www.worldheart.org.