In France, 200 women die every day from cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of female mortality. Based on this observation, the Agir pour le coeur des femmes foundation works on a daily basis in the field to ensure that women improve the health of their cardiovascular system. On September 29, on the occasion of World Heart Day, the foundation led a new campaign to raise awareness of cardiac arrest. Let’s go back to the information shared during this day.
The campaign launched by the Agir pour le cœur des femmes foundation
An observation alerts health authorities and all health professionals: in public places, women are less likely, compared to men, to benefit from a cardiac massage. Thus, when cardiac arrest occurs outside the hospital, women have a twice higher risk of death compared to men.
To know! Every year, 80,000 people in France suffer a myocardial infarction and 10% of victims die within an hour of this illness. Seven times out of ten, these accidents occur in front of witnesses.
With its “Women’s Heart Bus”, the Agir pour le cœur des femmes Foundation has carried out, in the space of three years, cardiovascular assessments on more than 12,000 women in vulnerable situations. To find out the bus route and check if it passes near you, go to this page.
On September 29, the Foundation launched a national media campaign with shocking visuals to raise awareness about female cardiac arrest. For Thierry Drilhon, co-founder of the Foundation who spoke in a press release “Cardiac arrest is only the consequence of an underlying illness which can be detected and treated.”
Symptoms of heart attack in women
Before menopause, women are four times less likely to have a myocardial infarction than men. However, given the increase in smoking and obesity among women, this gap has tended for several years to become less significant. After menopause, the risk is equivalent in both populations.
To reduce cardiac arrest, an absolute life-threatening emergency, it is essential to act as soon as possible and to recognize the warning signs which are quite atypical in women.
As the Fondation Agir pour le cœur des femmes points out, the atypical warning symptoms in women are:
- Great fatigue during exercise;
- Shortness of breath;
- Angoisse ;
- Digestive signs (nausea and stomach pain, heartburn) that occur before chest pain.
And the symptoms found in both women and men are:
- Oppression or crushing in the chest;
- Palpitations ;
- Discomfort, dizziness and vertigo which may be followed by loss of consciousness.
As the classic symptom of men (sudden, vice-like pain in the chest radiating to the left arm and jaw) does not systematically occur in women during a myocardial infarction, witnesses often do not dare to carry out the actions to save which cardiac massage.
Cardiac arrest: why there is a difference in care between men and women ?
Several prejudices and obstacles explain why women are less well cared for during a cardiac arrest.
First of all, in the general population, heart attacks are more likely to be attributed to men. But for more than thirty years, the majority of women have adopted a lifestyle similar to men and conducive to the occurrence of cardiovascular problems. Such as the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, the adoption of a stressful lifestyle without physical activities or even an unbalanced diet.
Without forgetting that women are negatively impacted by hormonal risk factors including contraception with synthetic estrogen (especially after age 35 with active smoking), complicated pregnancy and menopause.
The differences in the management of female cardiac arrest can be explained in particular by:
- Lack of knowledge of female heart attacks and its various symptoms;
- A gender prejudice thinking that if a woman collapses, it is vagal discomfort and not a myocardial infarction;
- The fear of massaging a woman’s breast;
- The fear that the breasts will interfere with cardiac massage;
- The increasingly preponderant presence of elderly women living alone with the high risk of death at home without witnesses.
Communication and prevention will be the key to reducing female myocardial infarction. According to the World Health Organization, 80% of cardiovascular accidents are preventable. Indeed, information, health education and regular medical monitoring significantly reduce risks.
Julie P., Science journalist
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