New cases of heart failure have declined steadily among women over the last 50 years but remain nearly unchanged among men.
The main reason for the difference between the sexes is that men and women tend to develop heart failure for different reasons, according to a new study. The report is based on the 54 year Framingham heart study .
In the study Dr Daniel Levy of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues evaluated statistics for 10311 men and women between 1950 and 1999 and identified 1075 cases of heart failure. The number of new cases of heart failure dropped by 30-40% among women between 1950 and 1999 but changed little among men over the same time period.
Although both high blood pressure and heart attack increase a person's risk of later having heart failure, Dr Levy notes that heart failure related to high blood pressure is more common in women. In general, major advances have occurred in the awareness, treatment, and control of high blood pressure, which has reduced the number of woman who go on to develop heart failure as a result of longstanding hypertension.
Men who develop heart failure, on the other hand, have often had a heart attack. Because more men are surviving heart attacks and are therefore more likely to develop heart failure, the number of cases of heart failure in men has not seen a similar decline.
The study also showed that the risk of dying after a diagnosis of heart failure declined by about a third from the 1950s to the 1990s.
“Despite the favourable trends in survival, heart failure remains highly fatal; among subjects who were given a diagnosis of heart failure in the 1990s, more than 50% were dead at five years,” the researchers note.
“The good news is that survival is improved for patients with chronic heart failure,” said Dr Michael Givertz, codirector of the heart failure programme at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Figure.
P MARAZZI/SPL
Swollen ankle of a 70 year old man caused by oedema due to heart failure, a condition that still remains “highly fatal”