CARDIOVASCULAR IMAGING IN CORONARY HEART DISEASE IN WOMEN ORGANIZM

Abstract

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among men and women. Women have a unique coronary heart disease phenotype with fewer calcified lesions, more non-obstructive plaque, and a higher prevalence of microvascular disease compared with men, which may partly explain why current risk models for identifying obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) may fail. so do women. This article summarizes sex differences in the functional and anatomical assessment of CAD in women with stable chest pain and proposes an approach to using multimodality imaging to evaluate suspected CAD in women according to recently published American Heart Association/American Heart Association data. College of Cardiology guidelines for the assessment and diagnosis of chest pain. A paradigm shift in the approach to imaging women with  coronary artery disease is needed, including updated risk models, a better understanding of CAD in women in whom nonobstructive disease is more common, and algorithms focused on the assessment of ischemia in nonobstructive CAD and myocardial infarction in nonobstructive CAD.