An Associate Professor at UBC says women need to do a better job of discovering the symptoms of cardiovascular disease.
A report by the Heart and Stroke Foundation revealed women are not getting properly treated or diagnosed for heart disease.
Dr. Karen Humphries says this is anything but a national issue.
“Women are five times more likely to do of heart disease than they are for example of breast cancer and I think this under diagnosis and under treatment and worse outcomes for women is really not just across Canada or in British Columbia, but frankly around the world.”
Humphries adds women often articulate their symptoms differently than men, which can often lead to a misdiagnosis.
“The way they describe that chest pain can be different, it could be discomfort or pressure rather than crushing pain. The other things is women will describe jaw pain or neck pain, nausea, dizziness and profuse sweating.”
“I think not only healthcare professionals need to be aware of that but women ourselves need to be aware of that as well,” added Humphries.
She adds while BC is ahead of the game on a lot of other major health topics, such as smoking, the province continues to lag behind when it comes to cardiovascular disease.
“I have done a lot of research on BC versus Canada and while we generally have a better risk factor profile – we are less likely to smoke than other regions of Canada we still have cardiovascular disease as our main issue.”
Over 25,000 women die each year from the disease nationwide.
In BC alone, 4,700 women succumbed from cardiovascular diseases in 2014.