National Women's Heart Disease and Stroke Campaign

Women and Cardiovascular Diseases Fact Sheet

• Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women over the age of 25.
  
  
• Heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases claim the lives of more than one-half million women each year-more lives than the next 14 causes of death combined, including all forms of cancer.
  
  
• One woman in eight will develop breast cancer over the course of her lifetime, but only one in 28 will die of it. Almost one in every two women will die of heart disease or stroke.
  
  
• A recent survey commissioned by the American Heart Association shows that only 8 percent of American women consider heart disease and stroke their greatest health threats.
  
  
• More than one in five females have some form of cardiovascular disease.
  
  
• Every year since 1984 more women than men have died of cardiovascular diseases. The difference in deaths currently is more than 500,000.
  
  
• Coronary heart disease is the No. 1 killer of American women.
  
  
• Almost 20,000 females under age 65 die of coronary heart disease each year; more than 33 percent of them are under age 55.
  
  
• In 63 percent of women who died suddenly of coronary heart disease, there was no previous evidence of the disease.
  
  
• Within six years after a recognized heart attack: 35 percent of women will have another heart attack; 34 percent will develop chest pain; 18 percent will have a stroke; 46 percent will be disabled with heart failure; and 6 percent will experience sudden cardiac death.
  
  
• At older ages, women who have heart attacks are more likely than men to die from them within a few weeks. Studies show that 38 percent of women die within a year compared to 25 percent of men because women are older and sicker when they have heart attacks.
  
  
• From ages 35 to 74, the age-adjusted death rate from coronary heart disease for black women is more than 71 percent higher than that of white women.
  
  
• 1995 death rates from cardiovascular diseases were 67 percent higher for black females than for white females (127.5 deaths per 100,000 white females compared with 213.2 deaths per 100,000 African-American females).
  
  
• Stroke is the third leading cause of death for American women, behind diseases of the heart and cancer. It is a leading cause of serious, long-term disability.
  
  
• In 1995 over 96,000 females died from stroke, which was 61 percent or three of every five stroke deaths that year.

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