What women want: Better cardiovascular health
Identifying, improving and preventing common cardiovascular disorders in women.
Determined to change the course of cardiovascular disease in women, a panel of experts convened Saturday to highlight recent research and provide suggestions to reframe cardiovascular disease at various stages of women’s lives, including pregnancy and menopause.
“Cardiovascular disease in women is understudied, underrecognized, underdiagnosed and undertreated,” said Demilade Adedinsewo, MD, MPH, FACC, assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. “There are myriad research and public health efforts underway to change this narrative.”
Heart disease often presents differently in biological females, compared with males, and certain cardiovascular disorders are unique or more commonly diagnosed in women, said Adedinsewo. These include peripartum cardiomyopathy, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and spontaneous coronary artery dissection.
The goal of the session, “2024 Update on CV Disorders That Disproportionately Affect Women,” was to “dive into specific topics in this field, demystify underlying assumptions about heart disease in women and explore novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches,” said Adedinsewo.
In addition to reviewing some of the sex-based similarities and differences of heart disease, the panel also shared innovative approaches and interventions for screening, detecting and managing CV disorders in women, such as how (and why) to perform cardiovascular risk assessments in the perinatal period.
The session also examined the interrelationship that pregnancy and the menopause transition have with cardiovascular health.
Adedinsewo was joined by Thais Coutinho, MD, senior associate consultant in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jennifer H. Mieres, MD, FACC, MASNC, FAHA, professor of cardiology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in New York.
Mieres, who is also chief diversity and inclusion officer and senior vice president, Center for Equity of Care, at Northwell Health, noted the importance of ongoing initiatives such as the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women movement, launched in 2004. Its goal is to increase awareness of cardiovascular disease in women, close gaps in knowledge and care and ultimately save women’s lives.
“Over the past two decades, the AHA’s Go Red for Women campaign, along with other integrated efforts, has increased awareness, expanded research funding, catalyzed discovery of unique biological pathways, enhanced knowledge and fostered specific guidelines for prevention and treatment of CVD in women,” Mieres said. “Despite improvement in awareness, significant gaps persist, and adverse CVD trends are emerging.”
