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Section: Being Well
These are the facts:
General Heart Disease and Stroke Facts About Women
• Heart disease and stroke are the No. 1 and No. 3 killers of women over the age of 25.
• Heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases claim the lives of nearly half a million women each year — about a death a minute. That’s more lives than the next seven causes of death combined, and nearly twice as many as all forms of cancer, including breast cancer.
• Of the women who die, one in 30 die of breast cancer. About one out of every 2.5 women die of heart disease, stroke or other cardiovascular diseases.
• One in five females in the United States has some form of cardiovascular disease.
• Every year since 1984 more women than men have died of heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases. The difference in deaths currently is more than 66,000 per year.
• 64 percent of women who died suddenly of coronary heart disease had no previous symptoms of this disease.
• Of the total number of U.S. deaths in 2001 from heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, women represented 53.6 percent of all deaths and men represented 46.4 percent.
• African-American and Mexican-American women have higher heart disease and stroke risk factors than white women of comparable socioeconomic status.
• Coronary heart disease rates in women after menopause are two to three times those of women the same age before menopause.
• Within six years after a recognized heart attack: 35 percent of women will have another heart attack, 14 percent will develop chest pain, 11 percent will have a stroke, 46 percent will be disabled with heart failure, and six percent will experience sudden cardiac death.
• At older ages, women who have heart attacks are more likely than men to die from them within a few weeks. After the first heart attack, studies show that 38 percent of women die within a year compared to 25 percent of men, because women tend to be older and sicker when they have heart attacks.
• Stroke is the No. 3 cause of death for American women, behind heart disease and cancer. It is a leading cause of serious, long-term disability.
• Overall, more women than men die of stroke. In 2001, more than 100,000 females died from stroke, which represents over 61 percent of the deaths from stroke.
• 25 percent of women who have an initial stroke die within a year. This percentage increases among women 65 and older.
• 53 percent of women under the age of 65 who have a stroke die within eight years.
Sources: American Heart Association Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics – 2004 Update and American Heart Association Biostatistical Fact Sheet, “Women and Cardiovascular Disease.”
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