Tag: Cristina D’Alessandro

Women’s heart disease: wrong symptoms, wrong words or wrong diagnostic tools?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters   

I walked out of our local hospital’s Emergency Department after having my textbook heart attack symptoms misdiagnosed as acid reflux. Much later, my increasingly debilitating cardiac symptoms were finally correctly diagnosed (same hospital, different Emerg doc). But after my hospital discharge, my pushy family and friends kept asking me about that first visit to Emergency: “Why didn’t you demand to see a cardiologist? Why didn’t you ask for more tests?”

As I was soon to learn, that is so NOT how most health care systems work – especially for female patients.    .    .   Continue reading “Women’s heart disease: wrong symptoms, wrong words or wrong diagnostic tools?” →

“A Typical Heart” Film Screening/Panel Discussion September 7th

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 6 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters   ♥  August 11, 2019

.UPDATE: This event was  FULL with a WAITLIST. Thanks to all who attended its first public screening in Canada! You can watch this film here.

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“A Typical Heart“  is a short but powerful documentary film about women’s #1 killer. Heart disease, in fact, will kill more women this year than all forms of cancer combined. Yet until very recently, cardiac research on diagnostic tools, drugs and procedures has been done only on (white, middle-aged) men.(1)  Even the lab  mice used in early cardiac research were exclusively male animals.(2 ) No wonder many women still consider heart disease to be a “man’s problem”.

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This remarkable documentary was the brainchild of paramedic and researcher Cristina D’Alessandro of York Region Paramedic Services north of Toronto, who first asked the profoundly important question:
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“If women make up over half our population, why are our heart attack symptoms still called ATYPICAL?”         Continue reading ““A Typical Heart” Film Screening/Panel Discussion September 7th” →

“A Typical Heart”: how YOU can help create this documentary!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

NEWS UPDATE:  “A Typical Heart” was awarded a $50,000 grant from Telus and StoryHive!  The 22-minute documentary was launched on July 15, 2019.

 

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters  ♥  July 30, 2018

Do you sometimes wish that everybody (and their healthcare providers) were more aware of the unique differences in male and female heart disease? …. 

I know you do! Cristina D’Alessandro is a Toronto-area paramedic and healthcare researcher who has that same wish. She’s a healthcare professional who, like so many of us, is concerned about what’s known as the “cardiology gender gap“ in diagnosing and treating women’s heart disease. She asks, for example, this brilliant question: 

“In paramedic school, they teach us about the ‘atypical’ signs of a woman’s heart attack. But why exactly do they call it ‘atypical’ when women are more than half the population?”

Continue reading ““A Typical Heart”: how YOU can help create this documentary!” →