While men and women can share many of the same symptoms, women have their own set of unique symptoms to watch out for.
Nancy Poe has been living with her aches and pains for 15 years now. She's had eight stents put in for heart disease and was diagnosed with lung cancer the same day.
"Some days I hurt, but then I stop and I rest and then I get up and I keep going," Poe told Action News.
But two years ago, she couldn't even do that.
"I felt like I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even walk from one room to the other room in the trailer," Poe said.
Poe's hands and feet also began to swell. Her doctor diagnosed her with congestive heart failure. It's a condition in which the heart can't pump blood the way it should. It accounts for 159,000 women dying each year - that's four times as many women as breast cancer.
"Women don't have the typical symptoms," Dr. Ali Tabrizchi, interventional cardiologist at the Heart Center at Sinai in Baltimore told Action News.
Dr. Tabrizchi says that often leads women to ignore them - symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling or unexplained weight gain.
"Alot of patients can get used to their symptoms. Shortness of breath, they may downplay and say well I'm just a little overweight or I'm getting a little bit older so I'm not going to walk as far," Dr. Tabrizchi said.
The doctor says even if you only have one of these symptoms you need to be evaluated for underlying heart disease. That's what Poe's daughter Ginny did. After her mom was diagnosed, the fit 50-something started getting shortness of breath and had heart flutters. Still -
"Never did I think, never did I think that it would be anything with my heart," Ginny explained.
But she listened to her body and after seeing her doctor, found out she had congestive heart failure too.
"I could have, I could have not made it," Ginny explained.
Now she's thankful she didn't let it go.
The leading causes of heart failure are diseases that damage the heart like high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and diabetes. Dr. Tabrizchi says the best way to prevent heart failure is to prevent those conditions. Follow a healthy diet, don't smoke, exercise five days a week and work with your doctor to control high blood pressure and diabetes.
For more information, contact:
Noel Lloyd
Sinai Hospital of Baltimore
(410) 601- 5026
nlloyd@lifebridgehealth.org
