Heart disease ‘is not just a man’s disease’
Nearly 200,000 women in Wales are living with heart and circulatory disease, new figures have revealed.
Current statistics from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has also found that nearly 4,500 women in Wales are dying from conditions such as heart attack and stroke each year.
While heart attack survival rates have greatly improved, there is still no way of preventing people from developing coronary heart disease as they get older.
The BHF says these figures dispel the myth that heart disease is a “man’s disease” and show that much more research is needed to better prevent, diagnose and treat heart disease and stroke.
BHF-funded research has also found that women have a 50% higher chance than men of receiving the wrong initial diagnosis following a heart attack. This can lead to poorer outcomes.
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “These figures reveal the high and growing burden of heart and circulatory disease in Wales.
“They specifically highlight that women are not immune to heart diseases and there is a need for more awareness so they receive better and prompt care.
“We urgently need to fund more research to better understand the impact of heart disease and help develop new and better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat it.”
Jovita Jones, 53, lives in Abergavenny and was diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), a potentially deadly inherited condition in 2012 after having a heart attack at work at the age of 46. She had been taking medication for high cholesterol since she was 24.
Leading a healthy lifestyle, a non-smoker and taking regular exercise, Jovita was prescribed the maximum amount of medication, taking four different tablets a day but her condition did not improve.
Jovita went on to suffer a second heart attack in 2012 and had a subsequent operation for two stents.
The BHF Cymru invested £450,000 over three years (2010-13) in an All Wales FH testing and screening project, part funded by the Welsh Government which was the first of its kind in the UK.
With the support of the All Wales service, Jovita fought for 18 months to undergo apheresis, a very specialised treatment similar to dialysis where every two weeks she had to undergo a two-and-a-half hour treatment to clean cholesterol from her bloodstream.
She finally received this treatment which she completed in 2016, and is now on a course of fortnightly injections to manage her condition.
Jovita has lost both her parents and two of her brothers to a heart attack. She is one of 11 siblings, and the majority are living with high cholesterol. Her brothers were 51 and 48 when they died. Jovita has two children and her daughter, 22, is currently on medication to manage her cholesterol levels.
Jovita said: “Without the BHF cofunded All Wales service, I would still be living now wondering when I would be taking my last breath.
“It has helped me massively, without it I would not have had a referral to be genetically tested – the nurses have helped point me in the right direction in terms of treatment. It has meant that my children are being monitored and that they will be well cared for, and it will prevent them going through what I have been through.”
Two years ago, Jovita began volunteering with BHF Cymru and is now treasurer for the Abergavenny and Pontypool fundraising group.
In two years, she has helped raise over £20,000 for the charity.
Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is an umbrella term for diseases including coronary heart disease, angina, heart attack and stroke.
There are an estimated 3.5 million women living with CVD in the UK, with around 78,000 dying from conditions such as heart attack and stroke each year, accounting for a quarter of all female deaths.
The BHF is currently investing more than £5m in Wales in cardiovascular research and has 18 active research grants across the nation.
One of these grants includes research into what controls how heart muscle cells contract.
BHF-funded researcher Dr Nia Lowri Thomas and her team at Swansea University are studying the processes that control how heart muscle cells contract during each heartbeat, what goes wrong in abnormal heart rhythms and how they can correct this.