Women & Heart Disease

Heart Disease: Scope and Impact ¹

• Heart disease (which includes Heart Disease, Stroke and other Cardiovascular Diseases) is the No. 1 cause of death in the United States, killing nearly 787,000 people alone in 2011.
• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people of most racial/ethnic groups in the United States, including African Americans, Hispanics and Whites. For Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders and American Indians or Alaska Natives, heart disease is second only to cancer.
• Cardiovascular diseases claim more lives than all forms of cancer combined.
• Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease, killing nearly 380,000 people annually.
• In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 34 seconds. Every 60 seconds, someone in the United States dies from a heart disease-related event.
• About 720,000 people in the U.S. suffer heart attacks each year. Of these, 515,000 are a first heart attack and 205,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack.
• n 2011, about 326,200 people experienced out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the United States. Of those treated by emergency medical services, 10.6 percent survived. Of the 19,300 bystander-witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the same year, 31.4 percent survived.
• Direct and indirect costs of heart disease total more than $320.1 billion. That includes health expenditures and lost productivity. 

Women & Heart Disease 

• Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, and is more deadly than all forms of cancer combined.
• While 1 in 31 American women dies from breast cancer each year, 1 in 3 dies of heart disease.
• Heart disease causes 1 in 3 women’s deaths each year, killing approximately one woman every minute.
• Only 1 in 5 American women believe that heart disease is her greatest health threat.
• An estimated 43 million women in the U.S. are affected by heart disease
• Ninety percent of women have one or more risk factors for developing heart disease.
• Since 1984, more women than men have died each year from heart disease.
• The symptoms of heart disease can be different in women and men, and are often misunderstood.

Women and men are not the same when it comes to heart disease.

1. Sources: CDC.gov – Heart Disease Facts
American Heart Association – 2015 Heart Disease and Stroke Update, compiled by AHA, CDC, NIH and other governmental sources