Danbury Hospital Focuses on Women’s Heart Disease

By Toth, David

In a field that sees more than its share of male practitioners, two women have joined the cardiology team at Danbury Hospital, a first in the institution’s history.

Dr. Susan Mani and Dr. Cynthia Taub joined the cardiology section last month, having recently completed their cardiology fellowships. Nationwide, more than 50 percent of medical school graduates are women, but only 14 percent of cardiology trainees are women.

Mani attributes the low number to the demands on a doctor’s lifestyle the field requires. “Cardiology is a hard field,” she said. “There is a lot of responsibility on the doctors because we can do so much more for patients than ever before. You have to be available 24/7.” Making the choice of perhaps postponing a marriage or children, many women opt for specialties that are less consuming.

Mani, a Philadelphia native, chose cardiology as her specialty “because the heart made the most amount of sense” in terms of function and because the large number of treatment options. Her husband and the rest of her family were supportive of her career choice, she said.

Taub said she chose Danbury Hospital because she was looking for more patient contact. She had just completed a cardiology fellowship in advanced echocardiography at a Massachusetts hospital but – despite being recruited by a number of university hospitals – could not see restricting herself to the field, she said. Echocardiography is an ultrasound of the heart, a valuable noninvasive tool for imaging the heart and aiding in diagnosing cardiac disease.

Taub said there is a lack of female role models available in the field, and that the only way for women to succeed in the field is to have good support from their family. Taub received her medical degree in China and came to the United States 12 years ago on a Dartmouth fellowship. She said China has more female cardiologists than males, a statistic that would not surprise most Chinese.

“There is a perception in China that women are more caring than men and therefore being a physician is a natural choice for them,” she said.

More choice

A benefit of having female cardiologists on staff is increased patient choice, said Dr. Andrew Keller, chief of cardiology. “Some women patients may relate better to a woman cardiologist, and now they have the choice.”

Keller is looking to recruit two more cardiologists to Danbury hospital, and is considering giving the option of part-time work as a way of offering life balance to prospective candidates. According to an American College of Cardiology life survey, female cardiologists are more likely to be single or childless than the general population.

The hospital is part of the Women’s Heart Advantage program, a national initiative aimed at improving women’s cardiovascular health. More than 250 hospitals participate in the program, five of them in Connecticut.

Doctors are more aware of gender-based differences in both the way symptoms of heart disease are manifested in women and in the way women respond to various treatment options.

“During medical school, I didn’t hear about differences in cardiac health between men and women,” said Mani. “It was only during my fellowship that the differences became clear.”

Mani completed her cardiology fellowship at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. She will serve as medical director of the Women’s Heart Advantage, which will focus on educating women about heart disease.

Different approach

Detection of heart disease requires a slightly different approach for women. “Testing for heart disease in women calls for different tests,” Keller said. A stress test, aimed at testing heart capacity, has a 50 percent chance of being incorrect for a woman.

Even though a woman is five times as likely to die from heart disease as she is from cancer, surveys show that most women are more concerned about cancer. Diabetes tends to be a poorer prognosticator for heart disease in women than men, meaning a woman with diabetes is more likely to develop heart disease than a man.

The false perception that women are less prone to heart disease and heart attacks than men, coupled with the fact that in the event of a heart attack, their symptoms may not be those traditionally associated with heart attacks, may lead women to shrug off the disease when it is present.

Women’s Heart Advantage aims to correct these misconceptions to give a full picture of heart disease in women. “We chose to join in order to understand how women in our service perceive heart disease as a problem,” Keller said. A main focus of the program is screening for heart disease in women.

Copyright Westfair Communications Oct 03, 2005