Experts Call for Women-Focused Cardiac Care Centres across Europe

Europe's top cardiologists are calling on health care organizations to create heart centers for women, drawing attention to the lack of specific heart centers for women in Europe. The call follows a number of recent studies showing that cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer for women and still under-detected and under-treated when compared to men.

Many health systems are currently archaic and based on male-type symptoms and diagnostic models, according to experts who recently participated in a clinical consensus. Consequently, heart disease is often misdiagnosed or treated in women, and women may not be diagnosed or receive treatment until later in the disease process than men.

Cardiac centers that specifically cater to women can be a game-changer that helps tackle these gaps, experts say. These centers would be interdisciplinary, with cardiac, gynecological, endocrinological, and rehabilitation experts working together towards a unified goal of delivering healthcare services specific to women's cardiovascular conditions.

The aim is to not only achieve better treatment outcomes but to get the problem caught and prevented early.

One of the experts' main worries is the way that heart disease manifests itself in women. Women might have less obvious symptoms than the “classic” symptoms that are usually associated with men such as severe chest pain, fatigue, nausea, shortness of breath, or back and jaw pain. These disparities often result in a failure to access care or obtain proper diagnoses, potentially contributing to complications and death.

Key Highlights:

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women but is often under-diagnosed in Europe
• Experts propose dedicated women’s heart centers for better, specialized care
• The aim is improved detection, prevention, and reduced gender gap in treatment

The planned centers would not only provide clinical services, but also be centers of research and education. Historically, women have been under-represented in current medical research and there is limited knowledge about the specific effects of cardiovascular disease on women.

Experts think it will be possible to gather more gender-specific information, refine clinical guidelines and educate healthcare providers to better identify and treat heart disease in women through the development of dedicated centers.

Another key area of focus in these centers would be prevention. Biological and hormonal differences may cause lifestyle risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, obesity and stress may manifest differently in women. The risk of the future could be minimized through the use of tailored prevention program, community outreach and early intervention screening program.

Healthcare leaders who back the program also say that policy changes are important. Taxonomies contend that the government and health institutions should give more attention to cardiac centers for women and provide funding for them.

Experts estimate that women's heart centers could help save lives, increase quality of life and close the gender gap in cardiovascular care throughout Europe if implemented on a large scale. The proposal represents a new awareness that better health care should be not just a "one size fits all" approach, but one that takes into accounts the differences in biology and clinical functioning between women and men.