Category: Diagnosing – and misdiagnosing

– posts here focus on how difficult it often is to get an accurate heart disease diagnosis in women

Ups, downs, and going with the flow of diagnosis

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  Heart Sisters on Blue Sky

Karen Salmansohn is the author of many books, including (2nd best title ever!) “HOW TO BE HAPPY, DAMMIT!”  – a book reviewed by one reader as “self-help for people who would never be caught dead doing self-help”).  In her regular  Psychology Today column, while going through a period of time she called her personal “Bucket List From Hell”, Karen made a profound observation that resonated with me – and may also do so with you if you’ve been freshly-diagnosed with heart disease (or any other bad thing you wish was not happening). As Karen wrote:     Continue reading “Ups, downs, and going with the flow of diagnosis” →

“Hedging” during diagnostic uncertainty

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

You know the term “hedging your bets”?  Basically, it’s defined by Oxford as “doing something to protect yourself against future problems.”   It turns out that when doctors are not 100 per cent sure of the medical diagnosis they are about to share with a patient, researchers who study “diagnostic uncertainty” suggest that these docs tend to start hedging.
Continue reading ““Hedging” during diagnostic uncertainty” →

Research on cardiac care disparities between men and women: a waste of time?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

I’m wondering how many more cardiac studies published in medical journals we’ll need before medical professionals start believing what decades of published research have already concluded. Here’s just one example: British researchers have described those past conclusions as: “an undeniable gender-based inequality in cardiovascular health to the detriment of women.”(1) 

At this point, I can’t help myself. Whenever I come across yet another heart study that comes to that identical conclusion, I have to quote my irreverent and brilliant heart sister Laura Haywood Cory, who at age 40 survived a heart attack caused by  Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD). No matter the specific focus, Laura interprets those “ain’t it awful?” cardiac research conclusions like this:  “Sucks to be female – better luck next life!”       Continue reading “Research on cardiac care disparities between men and women: a waste of time?” →

Doctors who know the impact of pregnancy complications on our cardiac risk

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 1 Comment
by Carolyn Thomas    ♥    @HeartSisters
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Because I didn’t seem to fit the profile of a person who’d just survived a widow maker heart attack, every cardiologist and nurse I met in the CCU (the intensive care unit for heart patients) asked me the same questions:
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“Do you have a family history of heart disease? Were you a smoker? Have you been diagnosed with diabetes?”

But not one person in the CCU asked me this question:

“Have you ever experienced complications during pregnancy?”   

Continue reading “Doctors who know the impact of pregnancy complications on our cardiac risk” →