Special Focus: At the Heart of the Matter
Coronary disease among women sprouts awareness, niche market
By Marie-Anne Hogarth
BEACON NEWS STAFF WRITER

AURORA — Melodee Church's story is one more women are hearing these days.

The Bristol woman was suffering from heart palpitations, fatigue, shortness of breath and dizzy spells, but when she pointed this out to her doctor, he didn't seem concerned.

Several months later, she was feeling ill, and a friend convinced her to see a cardiologist. As it turned out, angioplasty revealed an artery was 99 percent blocked.

"I am one of many women," says Church, 58, who tells her story three years later through her involvement with the American Heart Association. "But I was very fortunate. I know the number of women that we are losing yearly to heart disease."

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women since 1908, according to advocates. Yet, for a number of reasons — including insufficient numbers of women in studies and few women doctors in the field — the risk of heart disease to women long had been unrecognized.

Because women were not made aware of their risk, they weren't taking the proper preventative measures, advocates say. By the time they were diagnosed later in life, their disease had reached a more advanced stage, making it harder to treat and leading to a greater chance of death.

Today, awareness has grown substantially, according to the American Heart Association, which in a 1997 survey found only 30 percent of women listed heart disease as a leading cause of death among their gender. The number jumped to 46 percent by 2003, although there is still a large disconnect, especially in younger women.

Regardless, it is this growing awareness that is fueling the development of a niche market, says Nancy Loving, executive director of the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease, which lists some 30 women heart centers opening in the last decade.

"The trend is really peaking," adds Dr. Caroline Norman, whose consulting business, "Making a Difference: Heart to Heart," has conducted workshops in the past year for some 50 hospitals and large physicians groups, all in the early stages of starting such centers. "This is the year."

In the Chicago area, centers affiliated with Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Rush-University Medical Center and Rush-Copley Medical Center all have opened.

And with First Lady Laura Bush pushing the trend nationally, the cause of women's heart health is getting a boost locally from Oprah Winfrey, who is a patient of a cardiologist with Rush-University women's heart program.

The Chicago talk show queen reportedly transformed her experience with heart palpitations into fodder for her show and magazine. And Rush-Copley in Aurora has hired Winfrey's personal chef, Art Smith, to talk Saturday at the opening of the new Women Heart's Center on Ogden Avenue.

This local Women's Heart Center, an arm of the practices of Dr. Santosh Gill and Dr. Jennifer Petersen, caters exclusively to female patients, offering diagnostics, nutritional and psychological counseling services.

It is located inside Rush-Copley's new Heart Institute building, which is owned by Gill and some physician partners. It is designed as a joint venture between the doctors' practice, Fox Valley Cardiovascular Consultants, and the hospital, as a kind of one-stop shop for the heart.

Also housed here are diagnostics for men and women, cardiac rehab services, a diabetes education center, classrooms for patients and doctors, a research facility, as well as the offices of Fox Valley Cardiovascular Consultants and several other physicians, including one promising nutritional nirvana.

There are also plans to move into the building other heart-related services, including a sleep clinic, mammograms and bone-density scans.

Then there is Melodee Church's fledgling business — the Heart Reflections Wellness Center — offering classes in yoga, QiGong and dance movement therapy, as well as services like reflexology, aromatherapy, Reiki and massage.

It's the outcome of the patient-turned-advocate's life change following her near heart attack.

Struck by the fear she might die of another blockage, Church repeatedly visited Copley's ER, where Gill, the cardiologist who saw her, eventually realized gastric reflux symptoms were contributing to her patient's panic.

"The depression, the isolation became almost debilitating," says Church. "Fortunately, I am not the type of personality that stays that way for long."

Unlike other women heart patients who continue to deal with the emotional side of the illness on their own, Church found a friend in her new physician, and also a means of transforming her passion for yoga into a new way of making a living.

"This is her nine-year dream of putting everything for women under one roof," says Church of Gill's building. "And now, she is helping other people put their dreams into action."

Along with another heart disease survivor, Auroran Jody Knack, the women started Heart Sisters, the area's only support group for women's heart disease. Beginning in March, the group plans to meet at 7 p.m. the first and third Wednesdays of each month at the Women's Heart Center.

Future outreach efforts include a program to visit heart-attack patients in the ER and helping to advocate for their needs.

These grassroots elements could make a women's heart center a significant force in a community. But even the center's marketing could increase understanding about gender differences and heart disease.

Women, for example, cannot only experience the classic 'male' chest pains, they often show more subtle symptoms, like fatigue on exhaustion.

"One woman, she had nipple pain," says Dreyer's cardiologist Dr. TianChu Shih. "She went to the ER because it got so annoying, and she was truly having a heart attack."

Despite recent awareness, Shih says the disease remains frequently misdiagnosed. She often sees patients who have been told by other doctors they are having panic attacks — and are then prescribed drugs like Prozac, Zoloft and Zanex.

The experts say many women also require different diagnostic tests and will react differently to drugs than male patients.

Regardless of whether women go to a heart center for their gender, advocates say females should be assessed and referred to services for these six risk factors: obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol.

"If all six risk factors are controlled," says Norman, "then you can reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke up to 82 percent."

The jury is still out on how profitable these women's heart centers will be. Many hospitals report making more money treating men for heart disease, says Norman, perhaps because women seek treatment when the disease is more advanced.

Gill says women tend to develop heart disease a decade later than men, which could explain why more is heard about men having heart attacks.

At the same time, she and Shih have noted more women in their 40s and 50s needing angioplasty or bypass surgery lately. Gill believes this could be due to the escalating obesity and diabetes epidemics facing the nation.

For people like Melodee Church, that's all the more reason to spread the word about heart disease.

"You think you are immortal," she says. "I've learned that you don't have days, or hours or years. You have seconds, but you can make the very most of that second."

02/22/04