Gender makes a difference in heart treatment

Reporter: Amy Oshier
Published: Updated:

There are nearly one million heart-related deaths each year, evenly split between men and women, but cardiac warning signs vary widely.

Large artery blockages are usually spotted quickly but not in small heart vessels.

Women are much more likely to experience small vessel disease and be misdiagnosed.

Celina Gorre is the CEO of womenheart.org and is a heart patient herself. When neck fullness and fatigue hit hard, she headed straight to the hospital nearly a dozen times, only to be sent home undiagnosed.

“The conclusion of those ER docs was that I was having a particularly hard day,” Gorre said.

Studies show gender makes a difference in testing and treatment. Because cardiomicrovascular dysfunction occurs almost exclusively in women, if they’re tested only for large artery disease, then CMD remains undiagnosed. However, it’s an easy test.

“It’s very simple. It’s an additional five to seven minutes extra on top of a regular diagnostic cardiac catheterization,” said Dr. Hashim.

Testing for CMD is often not routine because it hasn’t been an official diagnosis. Hashim recently testified before the Centers for Disease Control to change that, and he was successful.

“The CDC approved it as a diagnosis, as of October 1st, 2023, that this disease of the microcirculation of the capillaries is now a recognized diagnosis,” he said.

And that is good news for Gorre as well as the 65% of heart patients with CMD who otherwise would go undiagnosed and untreated.

Hashim and his Medstar colleagues are compiling a registry of cardiomicrovascular patient symptoms and diagnoses.

It will soon become a national database to provide more information for clinicians and researchers on cardiomicrovascular dysfunction.

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