Article: Heart disease in women: the silent, and often ignored, killer Physician says doctors who see it as male ailment don't order adequate tests

Cheryl Pranke was 43 and suffering classic symptoms of heart disease: chest pain, radiating down her left arm. But when a stress test came back positive, her physicians dismissed any chance she had heart problems.

"They treated me like some dumb broad," said Pranke, now 49. "If I hadn't pursued it, I would be dead now."

Exactly right, Debra R. Judelson, medical director of the Women's Heart Institute of Southern California, told a packed house of 500 at the first Wisconsin Women's Health Conference. Time and again, physicians ignore women who show signs of heart disease, Judelson said. Because studies once showed that 40% of women who had positive treadmill stress tests did not have ...

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