Heart Disease - UP

Sarawak General Hospital’s Heart Centre is admitting more and more women patients these days and the ages keep getting younger. The centre’s Cardiology Department head Dr Ong Tiong Kiam said cases of heart disease among women in Sarawak were escalating and this all pointed to society leading an unhealthy lifestyle.

While the centre was still trying to gather the data to enable it to draw up strong statistics, he said from the pattern of patients coming to the centre, women were now likely to be on par with the men with regard to having heart disease.

“Yes, it (number of women heart patients) is rising. Going by our patients at the centre, we now have more women than men admitted,” he told reporters at the Women’s Heart Day event here yesterday.
He said this was highly likely to be caused by the busy lifestyle women lead these days.

“You have more women who are smokers and there are also many who are busy with their careers that they don’t have time for exercise and take care of their health.

“They opt to eat out more often and you don’t know if they are eating healthy,” he said.
With poor eating habits and an inactive lifestyle, he said women would tend to suffer from diabetes and this further increased their risk of having heart disease.

Adding on, Sarawak Heart Foundation board of trustees member and consultant cardiologist Prof Dr Sim Kui Hian explained that with diabetes, the estrogen level in a woman would be affected and this increased her risk to heart disease.

It is learnt that estrogen and other sex hormones protect younger women who have not reached menopause against heart attack and stroke. Dr Ong added that the symptoms of heart attack in women were atypical, all the more reason for women to be aware of their health.

“Surgery on women are also harder because their vessels and tubes to the heart are smaller. But then again, the doctors these days are highly skilled to handle these procedures.”

The event, in conjunction with International Women’s Day and organised by Sarawak Heart Foundation and SGH’s Heart Centre, held a health screening for the public while spreading awareness about heart disease.

It also gave the public a chance to consult health practitioners about heart disease and its risks.
Each year, over 8.6 million women die of heart disease and stroke globally. In the US alone, one in three women has died of heart attack.