Arterial Vascular Disease Underdiagnosed

Arterial vascular disease is widespread and often deadly in older U.S. women, but doctors too often fail to spot and treat it, a study found.

Arterial vascular disease is the gradual closure of arteries throughout the body. For decades, it was regarded as a men’s disease, because women were not at risk until after menopause and their life spans were shorter — but that changed once women started to live well into their 80s, said Weill Cornell Medical College study co-authors Dr. Ageliki G. Vouyouka and Dr. K. Craig Kent.

The study, published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, said several factors have conspired to keep women with arterial vascular disease off their doctors’ radar, such as women often outliving their male partners and either isolated at home or placed in nursing homes. They often have fewer financial resources and caregiver support.

This means they often don’t get the care they deserve, Vouyouka said in a statement. Many of the findings remain tenuous, because we simply do not have enough women participating in clinical trials to firmly establish their risk factors, disease prevalence, indications for intervention or treatment outcomes.