Although the average age for heart attack among women is 72 compared to 65 among men, women are more than twice as likely to die after a heart attack than men, studies have found. 

One such research presented at Heart Failure 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), found that “women of all ages who experience a myocardial infarction are at particularly high risk of a poor prognosis,” according to the study’s author Dr Mariana Martinho of Hospital Garcia de Orta, Almada, Portugal. 

The study was carried out on 884 patients with an average age of 62 years, 27% of them women. Women were older than men with an average age of 67 years compared to 60 for men. The researchers compared the risk of adverse outcomes for the two genders after adjusting for conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, coronary artery disease, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, peripheral artery disease, stroke and family history of coronary artery disease. They found that after 30 days, 11.8% of women had died as against 4.6% of men. After five years, around one-third of women (32.1%) had died compared to 16.9% of men.

While cardiovascular disease (CVD) develops 7 to 10 years later in women than in men, it has been found to be a major cause of death among women over 65 years of age. Also, data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) shows that over the past two decades prevalence of myocardial infarctions, a condition commonly termed heart attack, has increased in midlife (34 to 54 years) women, while it is on the decline in similarly aged men. 

Women face 20% higher risk

Women also face a 20% higher risk of developing heart failure or dying within five years after experiencing their first severe heart attack compared to men, according to research published on the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation, 

On similar lines, according to another study, there’s been a significant decline in the heart attacks among men between 1979 and 1994, and a comparative increase in the incidence for older women during the same period.

Women's reproductive protection

The silver lining, perhaps, is the natural protection that the female biology confers on a woman from heart disease during her reproductive life—the female sex hormone estrogen helps keep blood vessels open and flexible— albeit, this natural heart protection is not always guaranteed, even during a woman’s reproductive age. For instance, pregnancy puts additional stress on a woman’s heart due to the risk of Preeclampsia, the high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Half of all women who develop gestational diabetes during pregnancy also, develop insulin-resistant diabetes, a major risk factor for heart disease, in adult life. 

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