Heart Disease Screening for Women Begins

Beginning this month, The Methodist Hospital is offering a new service where women can visit The Methodist Hospital at the Texas Medical Center, Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, or Methodist Willowbrook Hospital for individual heart disease screenings, which result in personalized heart-attack risk reports. Nurses specially trained to counsel female patients about the results of their individual risk reports will meet with each woman screened. To make an appointment, call (713) 394-6078. The screening and risk report consultation is $50.

Heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer of women, but often, the symptoms women experience during a heart attack are completely different from those experienced by men, said Karla Kurrelmeyer, M.D., cardiologist at the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston.

"Nausea, shoulder pain and exhaustion may be the only signs a female experiences during an attack," Kurrelmeyer said. "Heart disease tends to occur later in women than in men, on average 10 years after menopause," she said.

Research shows that women go to the hospital on average one full hour later than men after experiencing heart attack symptoms. Most benefits of medical treatment occur in the first six hours after an attack, so delayed medical treatment reduces chances of full recovery. Women are more likely to die from heart attacks than men, Kurrelmeyer said.

For more information on heart disease, see http://www.debakeyheartcenter.com.

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