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Women and Heart Disease: A report from the 2010 World Congress of Cardiology in Beijing
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Incorporated within the World Congress of Cardiology Scientific Sessions 2010 in Beijing was the Third International Conference on Women, Heart Disease and Stroke, the first time this latter meeting has been held in Asia.
Fifteen sessions addressing women and CHD were held during the course of the Congress, including meetings on therapeutic interventions and case discussions; CVD and pharmacology in pregnancy; gender differences and international trends; mobilizing communities to reduce the effect of tobacco in women; and examination of the Heart Health Tool Kit, highlighting the needs and opportunities in every decade of a woman’s life for coronary prevention.
At the conference, Dong Zhao, MD, PhD, co-chair of the World Congress of Cardiology 2010 Scientific Program and chair of the Third International Conference on Women, Heart Disease and Stroke, said worldwide, more women than men die from CVD. In fact, CVD is the No. 1 killer worldwide for women, killing more women than all cancers, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Eighty percent of CV deaths in women occur in developing countries. CVD is the major killer of women in China, both urban and rural, surpassing cancer and respiratory disease. Because CVD has been considered erroneously to be predominantly a disease of men, a disturbing gap exists in the knowledge, understanding and general awareness of CVD in women worldwide.
Online survey
Before this conference, the World Heart Federation conducted an online survey of 1,017 Chinese women, widely distributed throughout the provinces of China, to ascertain their knowledge about CVD. Ten percent said they believed that heart disease and stroke were leading causes of death in Chinese women, but 82% said cancer was the major killer of women in China. Ten percent and 3% of women considered heart disease and stroke, respectively, to be their primary health concerns; but 72% of women thought that men were more likely than women to have a heart attack or stroke. Approximately one-third of the women surveyed did not believe that smoking (34%) or lack of exercise (29%) placed women at greater risk for heart disease and stroke.
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This survey highlights the potential gap in relating behavioral modifications to reduction of risk, and that Chinese women are often at increased risk for heart disease and stroke because they are unaware of CV risk factors. Not that this is sex-specific in the region — China consumes one-quarter of all the cigarettes smoked worldwide, with smoking highly prevalent among male Chinese cardiologists. Hypertension and hyperlipidemia are rampant in both sexes, and obesity is increasing.
These data in the survey of Chinese women are not dissimilar from those in the United States during the mid-1990s, when the American Heart Association undertook the Go Red for Women campaign, designed to increase awareness and consequent action by women to prevent CVD. The goal is that this AHA program can be exported to developing countries worldwide, and the initial approaches in China show that this is highly feasible and relevant.
Global campaign
Among the aspects currently being adapted within China are those that were enunciated in the 2005 Second International Conference on Women, Heart Disease and Stroke in Orlando, Fla. The campaign emphasizes motivating health professionals to appropriately care for women by recognizing differing symptoms of heart disease and stroke between the sexes and providing treatment accordingly. It also encourages more research into sex-specific heart health issues, but perhaps more importantly, appeals to policymakers to include heart health for women and their families in governmental health policies and programs.
The promotion for the Go Red for Women campaign in China, designed to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of CVD in women by raising awareness, emphasizes in its promotional illustrations that the campaign’s primary symbol is not just a “Red Dress,” but “a Red Alert,” signifying the need for increased awareness that the woman’s heart is vulnerable to heart disease and that prevention strategies are available and appropriate.
Dr. Zhao said the Third International Conference on Women, Heart Disease and Stroke “will definitely increase the awareness of the importance of heart disease and stroke to the scientific community and the public, especially in Asia, where over 60% of women in the world live.”
It was my privilege to have been involved in the planning and chairing of a number of these sessions, and I cherish the participation with my Chinese professional colleagues in this important scientific and public policy endeavor.
Nanette K. Wenger, MD, is a professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine and is a member of the CHD and Prevention section of the Cardiology Today Editorial Board.