I want you to imagine someone having a heart attack. Picture the scene: they are in the street and suddenly grip their chest and sink to the floor. They’re overweight, maybe smoke and drink too much, and don’t take proper care of their health.
I bet the person you imagined was a man, wasn’t it? Certainly most doctors would have thought of a male because cardiovascular disease – a general term for conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels, which can result in heart attacks – has always been considered a ‘male disease’. But the reality is that it is the biggest killer of women in the UK. And because we don’t recognise that – as the myth that men suffer from much more heart disease is so stubborn – women aren’t getting proper, timely treatment.
It is a silent epidemic. Now, 33 cardiologists have spoken up, writing a joint statement in the academic journal Heart. This highly gendered attitude is resulting in thousands of unnecessary female deaths a year, they say, demanding that the NHS acts to improve the care for women.
Despite it affecting 3.6m women in the UK, cardiovascular disease is ‘underdiagnosed [and] under-treated’ in female patients, they argue. The ignorance they highlight – to put it charitably – is breathtaking.
Women are more likely to have symptoms, such as high blood pressure, dismissed by doctors, less likely to receive life-saving treatment in a timely fashion, and less likely to be involved in clinical trials for new medica.