Women becoming aware of 'silent killer'

FRESNO, Calif. — Vicki Westburg made excuses for being tired and short of breath. She blamed long, stressful days on her job as a special education administrator for a weariness she couldn't shake. And she thought her labored breathing was due to asthma.

When she woke gasping for breath on New Year's Eve a year ago and her husband rushed her to the hospital, Westburg, 48, of Fresno, suspected an asthma attack.

Instead, she was stunned: Tests showed congestive heart failure. "The left side of my heart was just not functioning," she said.

Westburg is among 8 million women nationwide and more than 85,000 in California's San Joaquin Valley diagnosed with heart disease — and that doesn't include many others who don't even realize they have it.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in the United States, claiming the lives of more women each year than men. But in doctors' offices across the country, heart disease in women often goes undiagnosed. Their symptoms don't mirror those seen in men, and women tend not to recognize the warning signs, doctors say.

Like a lot of women, Westburg ignored her symptoms and kept working.

"I'll get better," she remembers thinking. "I'll get better."

We expect men to die of heart disease. But it has been killing more women nationwide than men each year since 1984, and the gender gap shows no signs of going away.

The number of women who die from breast cancer and all other forms of cancer combined doesn't equal the death toll from cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and strokes, according to the American Heart Association.

This year, an estimated 490,000 women nationwide will die of heart disease.

Nearly half of women who have a heart attack had never been diagnosed with heart problems, according to a June 2006 program brief on women's cardiovascular health by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The agency cited a review of medical records of 150 Minnesota women who suffered heart attacks between 1996 and 2001.

The women had made 8,732 visits to doctors and had 457 hospitalizations in the 10 years before their first heart attacks, the report said. Doctors diagnosed only 52 percent with heart disease before they had heart attacks.