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Sudden
Heart Death Strikes Women, Too
Excerpt By Ed
Edelson,
HealthScoutNews
Doctors should pay the same attention to preventing sudden cardiac
death in women as they do for men, a new Harvard study urges.
Admittedly, the rate of sudden
cardiac death is lower in women than in men -- only 30 percent
of the 400,000 sudden deaths that happen in the United States
each year occur in women, lead author Dr. Christine M. Albert
says in a statement. But there seems to be an assumption that
the conventional risk factors for heart disease -- such as smoking,
high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes -- don't raise a warning
flag for women as they do for men, she adds.
However, analysis of the Nurses'
Health Study, which followed more than 121,000 women for 20 years,
say otherwise. The research appears in the April 15 issue of Circulation.
"Our data suggest that coronary
heart disease risk factors do indeed predict sudden coronary death
in women, and therefore coronary heart disease risk factor intervention
should impact risk of sudden cardiac death in women," the
study says.
True, for 69 percent of the 244
women who suffered sudden deaths recorded in the study, death
was the first sign of heart disease, Albert acknowledges. But
almost every one of those women had a significant cardiac risk
factor. For example, diabetes was associated with a 2.5-fold increased
risk and obesity was linked with a 1.6-fold increase. Oddly, high
blood cholesterol did not raise the risk significantly.
Smoking was the real killer. "The
women who smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day had a fourfold increased
risk of sudden cardiac death," Albert says.
"A genetic factor might be
involved, particularly among women who die suddenly at a young
age," Albert says. Family history was a risk factor if a
woman had a parent who suffered sudden cardiac death before the
age of 60.
The study does upset one belief
about the difference between men and women. Many people assume
sudden cardiac death is caused by a heart attack. In fact, a more
common cause is ventricular fibrillation, a violent interruption
of the rhythm of the blood-pumping chambers of the heart. It has
been believed that sudden deaths in women were less likely to
be caused by an arrhythmia. The report finds the cause of death
was about the same for men and women: 88 percent in this study
compared to 91 percent in a recent study of men.
However, there is one disturbing
difference between the sexes. The incidence of sudden cardiac
death in men appears to be declining, down 2.8 percent between
1989 and 1999 for men between the ages of 35 and 44. In women,
meanwhile, it rose 21 percent in the same age group in that period.
The report means that more emphasis
should be placed on detecting and treating risk factors in women,
says Dr. Nieca Goldberg, a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital
in New York City and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.
"It has been shortsighted
in terms of the medical community ignoring symptoms for a lot
of women detected in screening," Goldberg says. "Smoking,
diabetes and hypertension [high blood pressure] needed to be screened
for and aggressively treated."
More information
You can learn about sudden cardiac
death and what can be done to prevent it from the American
Heart Association. You can also try the National Heart, Lung,
and Blood Institute's Women's
Heart Health Education Initiative.
Reference
Source 101
For
more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick
Prevention Resources".
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