Dr Carolyn Lam is a professor of cardiology and the first person to set up an all-women heart health clinic in Singapore. She is also the co-founder of a recently FDA-approved medtech product Us2.ai, which uses AI to detect heart problems early.
When people hear that heart disease is the leading cause of death globally, they tend to assume it mainly affects men. But heart failure affects women equally and accounts for one in three deaths among women around the world.
Yet heart issues in women remain understudied, under-recognised, under diagnosed and under-treated, with women underrepresented in clinical trials. Dangers surrounding heart disease and women aren’t promoted widely in the media, but why is this? When it is not only the biggest killer globally but something that has symptoms and risk factors that are complex and widely unknown, especially for women.
Similar, but not the same
The basis of this conversation is an anatomical fact: women and men’s hearts may have the same numbers of valves and chambers, but they are often different in size, shape and response. Women’s hearts are also smaller and beat faster to give the same output.
Women are more likely to suffer from a specific type of heart failure called Broken Heart Syndrome, when a person experiences sudden acute stress that can rapidly weaken the heart muscle leading to a heart attack, and they tend to need longer hospital stays after a heart attack but aren’t always given the right medications and treatments.
There are also women specific risk factors for heart disease. For example, if they suffered from diabetes during pregnancy they are more susceptible to heart problems later in life.
Research also indicates that same sex cardiologists will generally result in less follow ups and complications. That’s not to say that male cardiologists aren’t able to care for their female patients. Rather, women tend to have different perspectives, different concerns and look for specific symptoms or prioritize certain treatments and approaches. For instance, women often over-analyze or rationalize their symptoms – self-blaming, attributing their pain to “faults” like being overweight or lacking exercise, and not feeling entitled to have pain or to receive help.
How to protect your heart
Throughout my childhood my mother would worry about my father and raise concerns about his heart health without a second thought about hers. When she suffered heart disease and almost collapsed in her clinic later in life, I realised something needed to be done to highlight the dangers to women and what they can do to prevent heart disease.
Here are some simple things anyone can do: