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Heart and vascular diseases are the greatest threat to women's health worldwide and most American women are unaware of their risk. Nearly 43 million American women live with these diseases and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2004, Texas had the third highest prevalence. In Texas alone, approximately 1 million women are living with cardiovascular disease and it kills one of them every 20 minutes. Women can expect to live a large part of their lives with an increased risk of heart disease; and, 1 out of 4 women older than 65 has some form of heart disease. Also known as cardiovascular diseases (CVD), they include heart attack, heart failure, strokes, peripheral artery disease and other diseases of the heart and circulatory system.
Most American women are unaware of their risk. Most doctors are too.
A 2005 survey by the American Heart Association showed that only 8% of primary care physicians and 17% of cardiologists know that more women than men die from cardiovascular disease.
These diseases affect more women than men and are responsible for nearly 40% of all deaths in American women. Many women who have a heart attack do not know it since they are not aware that symptoms in a woman can be very different than those in men. Heart attacks are generally more severe in women than men. Furthermore, women and the doctors who treat them are often unaware that a heart attack has occurred. Since treatment during or immediately after a heart attack significantly mitigates the resulting long-term damage, accurately identifying symptoms of heart attacks is critical to the lifetime wellness of women.
So too is identifying treatments that are most effective for women. While effective treatments are not understood, we do know that women have 50% more adverse drug reactions than men. Additionally, the trajectory of women's heart disease is distinct from that of men.
Plaque builds up differently in women's arteries in a way that typical testing does not detect, and menopause significantly increases a woman's risk. Finally, little study has gone into effective prevention strategies for women. Treatment guidelines are developed from the medical literature, dictating the standard of care for all patients. However, less than 25% of those enrolled in the trials are women. Clearly it is time for a focused education and research effort to elucidate diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart disease in women.
The goal of this symposium is to educate the primary care physicians for women to include: obstetricians/gynecologists, internal medicine, family practice, endocrinologists, and nurse practitioners about prevention, early diagnosis and treatment strategies for heart disease in women.
Target Audience
Cardiologists, gynecologists, primary care physicians, Internal medicine physicians, family practice practitioners, endocrinologists and nurse practitioners.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this conference, the participant should be able to:
- Identify emerging controversies in cardiovascular disease and treatments;
- Cite the identification of cardiac risk factors in women;
- Describe the trends and treatments of cardiovascular disease in obesity and sedentary lifestyles;
- Describe emerging novel approaches and strategies to treating heart, vascular and valve conditions.
- Review current guidelines for managing modifiable biological risk factors for cardiovascular disease in light of new data presented this year;
- Review current guidelines for calcium supplementation and calcium scoring by computed tomography;
- Make an overall cardiovascular risk stratification of female patients that will be used to guide prevention and treatment strategies.
Program Schedule
Saturday November 17, 2012
8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. See brochure for details: 
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Third Annual 
