A Heart to Heart Conversation: Sex-Based Differences in Cardiovascular Disease Symptomatology

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics, cardiovascular disease, or heart disease, continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States. Despite being the leading cause of death, heart disease, including stroke and ischemic heart disease, receives significantly lower funding than other causes. While 1 in 25 women will be diagnosed breast cancer, 1 in 2 will experience heart disease (Stock & Redberg, 2012). Not only are the fatality and dangers of heart disease, especially among females, understated, the difference in symptomatology from males to females is rarely recognized. Specifically, women more frequently experience shortness of breath, weakness, and fatigue during a heart attack as compared to the typical chest pain and shoulder pain as that are usually experienced among male patients (Stock & Redberg, 2012). In the future, more research involving women is required as they are underrepresented in clinical trials despite making up over half of heart disease deaths. However, a major way of decreasing the fatality rate is educating women to become more knowledgeable in their gender-specific symptoms. The present research intents to survey women to ask about their knowledge of risk factors, symptoms, and possible comorbidity as means to address which population(s) most require this type of education. Using survey data, we will be able to determine the demographic populations that would most benefit from education and assistance to decrease the number of diagnoses and deaths by cardiovascular related events. Stock, E. O., & Redberg, R. (2012). Cardiovascular disease in women. Current Problems in Cardiology, 37(11), 450-526