Even though 73% of women know how to avoid getting heart disease, many don't know how to treat it once it's been found.
In a poll of 1,979 women over 35 years old, only 55% said they knew how to treat heart disease. Respondents often got it wrong when they said that things like exercise and healthy eating could be used as treatments, and less than 10 percent named real treatments like angioplasty and stent placement.
Hispanics and African-Americans are both high-risk groups for heart disease. Caucasian women were twice as likely to say they didn't know any treatments as Hispanic and African-American women.
The "Healthy From the Heart" campaign, which is run by the National Women's Health Resource Center and Cordis Corp., paid for the survey. The campaign tries to get women to learn about the different ways coronary artery disease, the most common type of heart disease, can be treated so they can make better choices if they are ever diagnosed.
"The good news is that women know they are more likely to get heart disease than men. The bad news is that they are too sure that they can stop it and treat it "Interventional cardiologist Dr. Cindy Grines from William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oaks, Michigan, said. "Women need to realise that education is the key to beating the threat of coronary artery disease. There are now many different ways to treat people."
Most of the time, a balloon angioplasty with a coronary stent is used to treat coronary artery disease. In angioplasty, a balloon-tipped catheter is threaded through an artery in the arm or groyne to the blocked artery in the heart. This widens the artery. When the balloon is blown up, it presses the plaque against the artery walls. This causes the artery to widen, which makes it easier for blood to flow through.
The drug-eluting stent is a tiny mesh scaffold that props the artery open and slowly releases a drug, like sirolimus, into the artery over a period of time. This was made possible by scientific progress. This keeps the plaque from forming again and keeps the blood vessel from getting blocked again and again.
Another option for treatment is bypass surgery. Even though it is more invasive, it is a safe and effective way to treat people who might not be able to get angioplasty and stent placement.
