Cardiovascular Disease Symptoms
and Risk Factors

Cardiovascular Disease in Women: Risk Factors and Prevention Overview

Gender interacts with behavioral, physical, social, psychological factors to influence “disease risk, expression, course, and prognosis”. It is therefore more than a sociodemographic variable that influences etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. (Chesney & Nealey, 1996)

Women suffer equally to men from cardiovascular disease. The risks are equal or at times greater for women and both health practitioners and women need to be informed of them. Intervention and prevention of risk factors in women need to be improved. Treating the changeable risk factors is important to reduce cardiovascular disease in women.

Some form of cardiovascular disease is present in 1 out of 5 women in the U.S. Annually, 503, 000 women die from a cardiovascular disease while all cancers combined will kill 258,000. Within a year of having a heart attack, 42% of women will have died and comparatively only 24% of men.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death for women in North America and in the U.S. it even outnumbers the next 16 causes of death combined. It is frightening to learn that 64% of women who died suddenly of a cardiovascular disease in the U.S. had no prior symptoms. ( Medical University of South Carolina, 2001)

In Canada, 39,924 women died of cardiovascular disease in 1996, which was just about equal to the same deaths in men. Major risk factors for heart disease are found in two out of three Canadian women. (Health Canada, 2002) These statistics highlight the fact that cardiovascular disease is one of the major threats to North American women’s health and lives.

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