Word: cardiovascular
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...About 1 million Americans, nearly half of them women, have cardiovascular disease. Of the approximately half a million fatal heart attacks in the U.S. every year, 247,000 occur in women...
...widespread misconception that cardiovascular disease is essentially a man's problem stems largely from the fact that heart attacks are rare among pre-menopausal females. Of the quarter of a million fatal heart attacks suffered annually among women, only 6,000 occur in those under the age of 65. Coronary heart disease in women "doesn't take off until menopause," says Dr. Mary-Ann Malloy, a cardiologist at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, "and in the past a woman's life expectancy didn't extend much longer than that...
Aggravating the problem is the fact that most major studies of cardiovascular disease have largely excluded female subjects. As a result, Loyola's Malloy complains, there are "loads of data on men and none on women. That only increased the impression that this was a man's disease." It also resulted in therapies and procedures appropriate for men but not necessarily beneficial to women. A landmark study showed, for instance, that a small daily dose of aspirin helps prevent heart attacks in men, but no one knows if the same is true for women...
...electrocardiograms (EKGs) are used to test for heart disease, women more often show some abnormalities. Consequently, many doctors are apt to ignore a slight irregularity in women's EKGs, explains Dr. Gerald Pohost, "unless it is crystal clear the woman has heart disease." Pohost, director of the division of cardiovascular disease at the University of Alabama Medical Center, thinks that the high rate of EKG errors may result partly from the placement of electrodes on a woman's chest -- more difficult to do because of the female anatomy...
Elmuts said that "at practice on Tuesday, I was thinking about how my lifting and cardiovascular work was really making a difference, and not fifteen minutes later...