الأربعاء، 30 مارس 2011

New initiative is a million women strong for heart testing

Cardiologist Azita Moalemi, MD, performs a stress test on Patricia
 Livelsberger, 63, who had a bypass procedure. Women are being 
encouraged to be tested for heart disease.
By Joe Brier, for USA TODAY
Cardiologist Azita Moalemi, MD, performs a stress test on Patricia Livelsberger, 63, who had a bypass procedure. Women are being encouraged to be tested for heart disease.
Pamela Serure and Carole Isenberg are on a mission to get 1 million women tested for heart disease.
Serure, who had a heart attack in 1998 at age 47, and Isenberg, who has heart disease in her family, founded a non-profit, Events of the Heart, which harnesses the talent and creativity of actors, musicians and artists to raise awareness of women's risks for heart disease and to inspire women to take control of their health. Since 2007, the group, funded with grants and corporate sponsorships, has staged theater performances and other events to get the word out.
Now, Serure says, they're bolstering their message of education with one of action by launching a Million Women's Heart Project.
The campaign is kicking off Wednesday in New York City at an event for invited guests, including celebrities such as S. Epatha Merkerson, Brenda Strong and Donna Karan, and leaders in business, medicine, technology and education. Its goal is to encourage women to learn their personal risk for heart disease by getting screened for high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar, and to urge their friends and family to be tested, too.
"Most women don't think heart disease is their No. 1 health threat," says Isenberg, a former teacher and producer (The Color Purple, The Women of Brewster Place). "One of our biggest missions is education, because women's biggest health threat is 80% preventable."
The Million Women's Heart Project "is the action step to the awareness we've been planting," says Serure, a speaker and writer. She wants women to know "you are your own best advocate."

Risk factors that you can control

Family history and increasing age are among heart disease risks you can't change, but here are some you can treat or modify:

�Smoking

�High blood pressure

�High cholesterol levels

�Obesity or overweight

�Physical inactivity

�Diabetes
Patricia Livelsberger, 63, of Jonesboro, Tenn., needs no convincing. In February, while visiting her daughter in Springfield, Va., she started to have heart palpitations and lightheadedness, and felt pain that went from her chest down her arm.
The pain lasted only a minute, but her daughter, Melissa Anderson, who is a critical care cardiac nurse, got her to an emergency room right away. Livelsberger was having angina, pain often caused by restricted blood supply to the heart, and was referred to a heart specialist for a thallium stress test, which found her arteries were 70%-90% blocked. She had quintuple bypass surgery the next day.
Had she not been with her daughter, where she still is visiting, she might have brushed off her symptoms.
"Luckily I was here, because otherwise I wouldn't be here," she says. Now she's recovering, and, with the restored blood flow to her heart, she passed a recent stress test with flying colors.
Livelsberger knew she had risk factors, including high blood pressure. Her father died at 39 of a heart attack, so her family history of heart disease was a red flag. But she didn't realize that the heartburn and heart palpitations she'd been having for several months meant anything, "because it wasn't a great pain. You know, just like heartburn in the center of my chest."
Cardiologist Naghmeh Tebyanian of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute in Falls Church, Va., where Livelsberger was tested, says that's not uncommon.
"We want women to be aware they can develop heart disease, and that it can present differently in women," she says. "Women get chest pains that are very atypical, and when they go to the ER, they're often dismissed because (symptoms are) so vague."
Thankfully, that's changing, she says. "Now we're getting better as a community of doctors. We're more aware of heart disease in women. But women also need to be able to identify symptoms that are different — unusual fatigue, chest pain, jaw pain, exercise intolerance. If you were exercising two weeks ago and were fine, and now you are feeling you can't go on, that could be heart disease."
Serure says that of every 1,000 women tested, 750 will have risk factors, such as obesity, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes or high blood pressure, and, armed with that information, most will be able to take steps to protect themselves.
The Million Women's Heart Project is teaming up with hospitals and US Wellness, which manages health education and screening events, to offer tests free to women, with costs paid by sponsors. The project intends to collect data on the test results, along with women's stories about their lives and heart health.
"There is a connection between allowing ourselves to be heard and being empowered," Serure says. "We can create a new reality if we can get women to tell their stories, get tested, and pass it on."

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