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Heart Failure in Women

  • Epidemiology of Heart Failure (JE Ho, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Heart failure (HF) is increasing in incidence globally, and approximately half of all HF patients are women. When women and men with HF are compared, there are significant differences in disease etiology, expression, outcomes, and perhaps, response to therapy. Hypertension rather than coronary artery disease is a more important etiology of HF in women, and HF with preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (HFPEF) is more common in women. Regardless of its etiology, women have better survival and less sudden cardiac death, but poorer quality of life with equivalent degrees of left ventricular dysfunction. Animal studies of myocardial response to stressors resulting in heart failure corroborate sex differences in ventricular remodeling, cellular morphology, and function. Despite the fact that women make up nearly 50 % of HF patients, their inclusion in randomized clinical trials has remained at about 20 %, with no trials including women as a prespecified subgroup for statistical analysis. Thus, the evidence base for treatment of HF in women is not robustly supported by sex-specific data.

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Acknowledgments

This article was reviewed by Dr. Carolyn S. P. Lam of the National University Health System, Singapore.

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Anne L. Taylor declares that she has no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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  1. Columbia University Medical Center, 630 W. 168th Street, PH 1-132, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Anne L. Taylor

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Correspondence to Anne L. Taylor.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Epidemiology of Heart Failure

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Taylor, A.L. Heart Failure in Women. Curr Heart Fail Rep 12, 187–195 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11897-015-0252-x

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