Geriatric Insights on Elderly Women and Heart Disease

Purpose of Review: The prevalence of heart diseases is growing in recent years and will further rise because of the increased longevity of elderly population, mainly reported for the female gender. Recent Findings: Several studies have demonstrated the presence of a large sex-specific variability on physiopathology, presentation, and overall prognosis of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Women, in particular, tend to present heart diseases generally later than men, have a higher number of comorbidities, and report worse outcomes. Moreover, atypical symptomatology of heart diseases in older women constitutes a potential source of delay in the identification of such pathologies, influencing the management of CVDs that is still characterized by a lesser access to invasive procedures for the female gender compared with the male one. The lack of knowledge in the field of sex-specific disparities in CVDs is probably due to the underrepresentation of women in the first large cardiovascular trials, with the processing of guidelines for the prevention, identification, and treatment of CVDs that do not consider gender variability. Summary: Although growing attention has been recently dedicated to this topic, further investigations are needed to fully analyze heart diseases in elderly women with the aim of developing new and targeted recommendations for clinical practice. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York.