(University of British Columbia) — According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, heart disease and stroke is the number one cause of premature death in Canadian women — and half of all women who experience heart attacks have their symptoms go unrecognized.
Dr. Tara Sedlak, a clinical associate professor of cardiology at UBC, a cardiologist at Vancouver General Hospital and medical director at the Leslie Diamond Women’s Heart Health Clinic, is working to change that. Frustrated after seeing women continually misdiagnosed, Dr. Sedlak has focused her research career on women’s heart health — aiming to increase recognition, improve diagnoses, and ultimately, save women’s lives.
We spoke with Dr. Sedlak about her latest research and what women should know about their heart health.
For a variety of reasons, including their family commitments, women have been underrepresented in clinical cardiology trials for many years, often only comprising between 10 to 25 per cent of the study subjects. This has led to a tremendous knowledge gap when it comes to women’s heart health. (…)