April 7, 2010
Dear Friend of the Texas Heart Institute,
Here are some shockers. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S., responsible for the deaths of more than 40% of American women. A woman in this country dies from cardiovascular disease almost every 60 seconds. Heart disease threatens all women, even those in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Eight times as many women will die from heart attacks this year than from breast cancer. Women have a 25% higher risk of dying within the first year after a heart attack compared to men.
There's more. Heart disease kills more women than men each year, and that's been the case every year since at least 1984. What's more, a 2005 survey by the American Heart Association showed that only 8% of primary care physicians and 17% of cardiologists knew about that gender disparity.
These are just the tip of the iceberg, and they are among the many reasons we at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital are going forward this year with a Center of Excellence dedicated to research, prevention, education and improved medical treatments for heart disease in women.
You will be hearing much more about this exciting effort soon.
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Dr. Stephanie Coulter with a patient. |
Stephanie Coulter, MD, will provide the medical leadership. Dr. Coulter is an outstanding cardiologist. Her specialties include echocardiography, valvular heart disease and, of course, women and heart disease. She is a builder, a doer, and also has been an excellent spokesperson on these issues on behalf of THI, including recently on local and national television.
Dr. Coulter is committed to, and passionate about, the mission of creating a top-notch center dedicated to better women's heart health. She will be a terrific leader.
"Much of our understanding of heart disease and heart attack, and the basis for our standard methods of diagnosis and treatment, are the result of research conducted on men," says Dr. Coulter. "Too often, women's heart disease is ignored by primary care physicians, emergency room staff, and women themselves."
The ultimate goal is to turn around those statistics cited above. Of course, they aren't just numbers. They represent the lives of many real women. And those women–as mothers, daughters, wives, grandmothers, sisters and more–affect countless other lives.
This goes to the core mission of the Texas Heart Institute, which is dedicated to prevention, education and discovery in the treatment of heart and vascular disease.
Other Troubling Numbers
You also will be hearing more soon about the work of another THI Center of Excellence, the Center for Coronary Artery Anomalies (CCAA), which we announced last summer in response to another disturbing problem–sudden cardiac death (SCD) among young people.
Of the approximately 5 million student athletes in the United States, about 50,000 have a potentially dangerous type of coronary artery anomaly associated with SCD. These congenital defects, which too often go undetected, account for 25% to 33% of SCDs in young people – second only to cardiomyopathies.
Hardly a year goes by that we don't read a headline or two about some young athlete who dies suddenly in the middle of a game or after team practice. We also know that the U.S. military has a similar problem with young recruits it puts through boot camp and other rigorous physical activities.
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Dr. Paolo Angelini |
The CCAA is ably headed by Paolo Angelini, MD, a very talented senior cardiologist and interventionist on the THI professional staff who has devoted his career to the study of coronary anomalies and has published the only textbook on the topic.
He and the CCAA staff have been working with the U.S. Army and with a number of school districts in the Houston area. We hope to proceed very soon with an innovative program to screen thousands of young Houston-area athletes and students using portable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.
Dr. Angelini is equally determined to see that the CCAA at THI makes a difference by addressing this problem in our community and in the wider world.
His own words are on point: "The challenge we are facing is best indicated by the current U.S. guidelines regarding prevention of sudden cardiac death in the young: the current standard is to have a general practitioner or a physician assistant perform a history and physical, and issue an approval to participate in sports competitions. In fact, we believe such policy leads to some hundreds of potentially preventable sudden cardiac deaths per year in the U.S.," Angelini says. "We want to demonstrate that a simple, reliable, innocuous protocol, that can be easily reproduced in large population screening, is cost-effective and affordable; and it will save lives!"
In addition to demonstrating the value of this screening in avoiding more sudden deaths, the project also will help us study and learn more about the precise incidence rates of SCD in a large population.
With the support of generous and enlightened donors, and the passion and dedication of doctors, researchers and others, attacking these problems in meaningful ways is our mission.
Respectfully yours,
James T. Willerson, MD
President and Medical Director
Contact Dr. Willerson
Read the previous issue of Heart to Heart about support from the Godstone Ranch Motorsports team. For a list of all past issues, see the archives.
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