Some Heart Disease Hides In Many Women

For years, researchers have suspected that women develop heart disease differently than men.

Now, according to The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay, the latest results from ongoing studies of heart disease in women offer new evidence that those suspicions are correct, when it comes to diseased heart arteries.

For Part Two of this week's "Heartscore" series, Senay spoke with Antoinette Jordan, whose chest pain remained a mystery for years, despite numerous doctor visits and diagnostic tests on her heart.

"I've had ekgs (electrocardiograms) that showed nothing. …I was given a cardiac catheterization. The results of that were I had clean coronaries. I had no blockages."

Jordan finally got some answers from Dr. Nathaniel Reichek, with the help of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

It showed that, even though she has no blockages in her large heart arteries, she does have serious abnormalities in the smaller blood vessels in the heart, which are depriving her heart muscle of oxygen.

"It's very subtle," Reichek says, "but it's not getting as much blood supply."

A large, long-term study of gender differences in heart disease recently found Jordan's heart problem to be very common."Two-thirds of the more than 900 had no major blockages," observes Dr. Holly Andersen, a women's heart specialist. "Traditionally, we told them they were fine, but in this investigation, we went on to look at their hearts more closely, and found that half of those women had severe abnormalities in the microcirculation, or the smallest blood vessels that supply the heart with blood."

Andersen says the findings highlight the need for awareness of other gender differences in heart disease: "What we know is that the tests in heart disease are not as good in women as they are in men. … Although we treat women like men, they don't do as well once they get their heart disease, and they're more likely to die from it."

Jordan's case highlights the best advice for women worried about their heart health, Senay stresses.

"Just because you have a normal coronary angiogram doesn't mean you don't have heart disease, and you need to look further and ask for help if you're still having symptoms," Anderson points out.

Senay adds that it's not yet fully understood how to treat the condition, or its causes. But it still helps to be aware, and in control of known heart disease risk factors.

Regular exercise, maintaining a healthy diet and body weight, quitting smoking, reducing stress, controlling your blood pressure, and getting cholesterol levels down all help.