Despite decades of halting progress, women’s cardiovascular disease diagnosis, treatment and outcomes continue to lag behind men’s, said Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, the Irwin and Sheila Allen Chair in Women’s Heart Research in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, in her keynote address on April 16 for Weill Cornell Medicine’s sixth annual Diversity Week.
“Females with no obstructive coronary arteries account for about a third of ischemic heart disease acute coronary syndromes. But when your arteries look like a guy, you get treated, and when your arteries look like a gal—meaning you look like you don’t have heart disease—there’s a surplus of deaths,” said Dr. Merz, who is also director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center and the Linda Joy Pollin Women’s Heart Health Program at Cedars-Sinai. “Now we have something to chew on—we’ve started to have some evidence of a reason for the disparities in heart disease observed in women.”
Dr. Merz’ lecture, “Sex and Gender Medicine: Science, Policy and Health Disparities in CVD,” was part of a series of events to mark Diversity Week, which celebrates Weill Cornell Medicine’s commitment to greater equity, diversity, and inclusion in academic medicine and health care. She provided a sweeping overview of hers and others’ research, chronicling more than four decades of evolving insights into women’s heart health.