Cardiac Arrhythmias-Cardiac Disturbances (Article-04)

Cardiac Arrhythmias-Cardiac Disturbances

Disorders of the heart rhythm can produce symptoms ranging from mild palpitations to sudden death. Heart arrhythmias come in two general “flavors:” those that are too slow (bradycardia) and those that are too fast (tachycardia). 

Women don't really get much heart disease, and when they do, it behaves pretty much like the heart disease that men get. The real facts are that heart disease is the number one killer of women, and when women get heart disease it often acts quite differently than it does in men. Failing to understand these two fundamental facts leads to a lot of preventable deaths and disability in women with heart disease. 

In a recent survey conducted by the American Heart Association, 6 in 10 women said that the major threat to their health was breast cancer; only 1 in 10 said it was heart disease. But in 1999, while cancer was killing 264,000 American women (41,000 of who died of breast cancer,) cardiovascular disease killed 513,000 -- and it's the same story every year. In fact, each year since 1984, more women than men have died of heart disease. Many doctors don't get it either. Less than half the doctors in one recent survey considered heart disease to be a major threat to their female patients. Worse, less than half of all women receiving regular medical care say that their doctors have ever talked to them about reducing their risk of heart disease.

Worst of all, the symptoms of heart disease -- and even the heart disease itself -- can be quite different in women than in men. And since medical textbooks almost exclusively describe "typical" heart disease (that is, the kind men get), doctors often fail to recognize heart disease when they see it in their female patients. The fact that heart disease is so common in women, and at the same time is underestimated and misunderstood by both women and their doctors, contributes in no small way to the high death rate.