SOMEHOW, somewhere along the line, women have been getting all the wrong messages about heart disease. A heart specialist told the European Society for Cardiology, meeting in Stockholm this week, that women are significantly less likely than men to be investigated for heart disease, have their condition diagnosed correctly, or be referred for specialist help.

This despite the fact that heart disease is the No 1 female killer — and death rates in women are falling more slowly than in men.

Women are ten times more likely to fall prey to heart disease than to breast cancer.

Why, then, do we all have the impression that heart disease is something that men should be worried about, and that women should be more worried about conditions such as breast cancer? It may have something to do with the fact that heart disease seems to manifest itself differently in men and women. And in a traditionally male-dominated world, with a historically male-dominated medical profession, it’s the template of the male heart condition that has influenced all our perceptions.

Research has shown that female heart rhythms are subtly different from those of men. That means that abnormalities might not be picked up on most electrocardiogram machines, which are programmed for a male pattern of heartbeat.

Women also often experience heart attacks differently from men, not as the crashing chest pain that tends to be associated with men, but a chest tightness, or a generalised discomfort, more akin to indigestion.

According to Professor Ian Graham, of the Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, this means that women are likely to be described as having atypical chest pain rather than being investigated for heart disease.

Women also tend to experience heart problems slightly later in life than men. And there are concerns that trials of heart drugs may pinpoint those that are good for men, rather than women.

All this may explain why the rates of diagnosis and successful treatment for women are looking increasingly worrying.

How to change all this? It may be that women themselves hold the key. Once women know that something poses a significant threat to them or to their families, they are good about doing something about it.

It was women’ s increasing awareness of breast cancer that led them to mount such hugely successful campaigns for improved services and research. That’s exactly what’s needed with heart disease. Sisters may have to do it for themselves.

Warning signs

Women tend to get more “atypical” symptoms of heart attack than men.

Typical heart attack symptoms are crushing chest pain, sweating, looking grey and being sick.

Atypical symptoms include pain/tingling in the right arm, jaw pain, a dead feeling in the left arm, discomfort in the lower chest, pain radiating to the back, breathlessness and sudden palpitations.

None of these in themselves necessarily means that you are having a heart attack.

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