February is American Heart Month. Sponsored by the American Heart Association (AHA), the month is designed to raise public awareness of heart disease. On February 21, the AHA will celebrate Woman's Heart Day (1). This year, the AHA will not celebrate Men's Heart Day.

It is difficult to understand why the Heart Association is not sponsoring Men's Heart Day, especially when you consider these facts that the AHA reports on its own website:

Death rates for cardiovascular disease were 411 for white males, and 526 for black males in 1999 (2). Among women, the rate was 295 for white females, and 402 for black females (3). So death rates are substantially higher in males than females.

Of greater concern is the fact that men are far more likely to die of heart disease while they are still in the middle of establishing their careers and raising their families. In 1999, 65,000 men in the 45-64 age group died of cardiovascular disease, while only 29,000 women of the same age died of CVD.

When MHA staff recently contacted the American Heart Association to explain this omission, we received this reply:

"In response to your e-mail, for many years heart disease and heart attack were only meant to happen to men. There was not enough information for women to realize that this was just as important for them. Now through research it has been found that heart disease is the number one killer in women. We have started many programs and campaigns for women to realize this fact."

This reply doesn't make sense. It's like the American Psychiatric Association saying: "For many years, depression was only believed to happen in women. So now, we are directing all of our programs to depression in men."

And as the recent MHA Special Report shows, women have not been subject to discrimination in being referred for diagnostic or curative cardiac procedures (4).

So the AHA claim that women's heart disease deserves priority ignores the basic medical fact that men have a far greater risk of death than women.

Do you have high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol? Do you have a father, brother, or other male friend who died of heart disease? Maybe they would still be alive if the American Heart Association's programs were guided by science, not whimsy.

-Carey Roberts

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Contact:
Robert Bonow, MD
President, American Heart Association
Send your message to Dr. Bonow to this e-mail address.

References:

1. Woman's Heart Day 2003. www.americanheart.org

2. American Heart Association. Men and Cardiovascular Diseases.

3. American Heart Association. Women and Cardiovascular Diseases.

4. Men's Health America: The Myth of Female Undertreatment for Heart Disease.