Women’s heart attack symptoms and risk factors differ from men’s. Here’s what to know
Women’s heart attacks often have more subtle symptoms and sex-specific risks. Experts provide preventive measures to protect your body
Lori Sepich smoked for years and sometimes skipped taking her blood pressure medicine. But she never thought she would have a heart attack.
The possibility “just wasn’t registering with me”, says the 64-year-old from Memphis, in the US state of Tennessee, who suffered two heart attacks 13 years apart.
She is far from alone. More than 60 million women in the United States – and an estimated 275 million to 300 million women globally – live with cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease as well as stroke, heart failure and atrial fibrillation.
According to the World Heart Federation, 30 per cent of deaths in women are caused by cardiovascular disease each year. In the US, one in five women dies of it, 37,000 of them from heart attacks.
In fact, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women globally, with women and men being nearly equally affected by the condition. According to a letter published in The Journal of Nursing Research in August 2025, despite this, the disease in women remains significantly underdiagnosed and under-researched, leading to a critical global deficiency in sex-specific data and effective risk assessment tools.
