Women make cardiac progress

'ON THE RIGHT TRACK' | Heart attacks more common, but hospital survival rates improving

Two new studies show that heart attacks have become more common among middle-aged women in the last two decades, but in-hospital survival rates, especially for younger women, are improving compared with men.

Both studies were published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

In one, researchers using federal survey data compared heart-attack rates for men and women between the ages of 35 and 54 during two time periods: 1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2004.

Men had more heart attacks during both periods. But the percentage of men who reported a history of heart attack decreased (dropping from 2.5 percent to 2.2 percent), while increasing for women (from .7 percent to 1 percent), the researchers found.

One factor likely playing into the trend is that women haven't seen the same improvements as men in reducing their risk for heart disease, researchers noted.

"Men's smoking rates declined and blood pressure improved in recent years, whereas similar improvements were lacking in women," the study said.

The second study, involving more than 900,000 heart attack victims, found that in-hospital survival rates after a heart attack have improved for both genders over the last decade. But women, particularly those younger than 55, have made more progress in this area than men, it found.

The findings are encouraging since young women have traditionally fared worse after a heart attack than men the same age. Now, the gap is narrowing.

Such improvements "indicate that we are on the right track," but more emphasis needs to be placed on preventing heart disease in women, especially since women tend to experience subtler symptoms of heart attack than men, according to an accompanying editorial in the medical journal.

"Cardiovascular illnesses have been long neglected in their role as the primary cause of mortality in women, both by patients and physicians," wrote Doctors Sabine Oertelt-Prigione and Vera Regitz-Zagrosek. "Men are still believed to be at greater risk for [heart attack] and stroke and are thus more aggressively informed, counseled and treated for these diseases."

Despite being overweight and a smoker, Cindi Reuland of Big Rock said heart disease wasn't on her radar until she had a heart attack in 1988.

"I had had symptoms for six months, but I didn't realize they were symptoms of heart disease," said Reuland, 59, a spokeswoman for WomenHeart.org.

Thanks to quick diagnosis and treatment by a cardiologist, Reuland survived the attack with minimal muscle damage. But she said greater awareness among doctors is needed since many of the female heart attack victims she's met were initially misdiagnosed as having anxiety or gallbladder disease.

"There are so many women that still are worried about breast cancer and don't think that heart disease is an issue for them," she said. "That needs to change."