Advancing the access to cardiovascular diagnosis and treatment among women with cardiovascular disease: a joint British Cardiovascular Societies’ consensus document (24 September 2024)

Summary

Despite significant progress in cardiovascular pharmacotherapy and interventional strategies, cardiovascular disease (CVD), in particular ischaemic heart disease, remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among women in the UK and worldwide.

Women are underdiagnosed, undertreated and under-represented in clinical trials directed at management strategies for CVD, making their results less applicable to this subset. Women have additional sex-specific risk factors that put them at higher risk of future cardiovascular events. Psychosocial risk factors, socioeconomic deprivation and environmental factors have an augmented impact on women’s cardiovascular health, highlighting the need for a holistic approach to care that considers risk factors specifically related to female biology alongside the traditional risk factors.

Importantly, in the UK, even in the context of a National Health Service, there exist significant regional variations in age-standardised mortality rates among patients with CVD.

Given most CVDs are preventable, concerted efforts are necessary to address the unmet needs and ensure parity of care for women with CVD. The present consensus document, put together by the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS)’s affiliated societies, specifically portrays the current status on the sex-related differences in the diagnosis and treatment of each of the major CVD areas and proposes strategies to overcome the barriers in accessing diagnoses and treatments among women. This document aims at raising awareness of the scale of the current problem and hopes to stimulate a multifaceted approach to address sex disparities and enable future comprehensive sex- and gender-based research through collaboration across different affiliated societies within the BCS.