Women are underdiagnosed and undertreated in all areas of cardiovascular disease, UK experts have warned.

Better awareness of disease risk and presentation among healthcare professionals is needed to tackle the ‘unconscious bias’ that heart disease is a man’s condition, the joint British Cardiovascular Societies’ said.

The NHS also needs to ensure properly designed pathways and put in place dedicated women’s heart champions to turn the situation around, they wrote in a consensus statement in Heart. More women also need to be enrolled in clinical research.

They said that conventional cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, are often not treated as promptly or as appropriately as they are in men.

Women also face particular cultural, societal, and financial issues, which magnify their heart disease risks, as well as the influence of hormones, pregnancy, and the menopause.

It means women admitted with heart attack are less likely to receive relevant therapies, they said.

And women with coronary artery disease present older and with more comorbidities than men yet are less likely to be referred for diagnostic tests ‘despite a higher burden of angina’, it said.

Healthcare professionals have a ‘lower perception of cardiovascular disease risk in women’, and research from primary care shows they are less likely to be prescribed medication, the team added.

When it comes to heart failure, women also present at a later age and have more comorbidities including hypertension, atrial fibrillation and obesity, yet physiological differences are not taken account in guideline recommendations.

A women’s health strategy should also be developed to ‘stop the needless death toll from what is essentially a preventable disease’, they concluded.

Professor André Ng, president of the British Cardiovascular Society, said this is the first consensus statement to comprehensively outline the many layers of inequalities that exist in relation to cardiovascular disease in women.

‘Raising awareness across the medical profession, to patients and the general public is an important first step.’

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation and consultant cardiologist, said evidence from across the globe shows the odds are stacked against women in part due to entrenched biases in society and healthcare.

‘This shocking state of affairs show inequalities negatively affect women’s heart health at all stages in the patient journey.’

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘This government will prioritise women’s health as we reform the NHS and ensure their voices are heard.

‘Cardiovascular disease is one of this country’s biggest killers of women and men, which is why this government will deliver up to 130,000 extra health checks at workplaces across the country to catch this and other diseases earlier.’

A version of this article was first published by our sister title Pulse