INTERVIEW
Is it a time bomb? Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, healthcare professionals have noted a drop in emergency room admissions throughout France. "We have a 60% drop in hospital admissions," says Professor Europe Mounier-Vehier, head of service at the Heart-Lung Institute at Lille University Hospital, on Europe 1. But for several days now, "we have seen very serious cardiological emergencies, forms of infarction that we no longer saw". And the situation of women is particularly worrying.
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Among these hospitalizations which have been declining for a month, women are unusually underrepresented. "We mostly have men: around 80% men and 20% women, and this is not normal at all", fears Claire Mounier-Vehier, co-founder of Agir pour le coeur des femmes. "Women do not consult and wait until the last moment."
Do not wait in case of an alert
However, "cardiovascular diseases kill 200 women a day in France" and represent "the leading cause of death among them", recalls the specialist in Sans Rendez-vous , Friday. In addition, "they are less well screened" than men. As confinement causes "more stress, more smoking and more sedentary lifestyle", women "will not listen to each other".
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"What we fear is that there is a loss of chance" for healthy survival, warns the professor on Europe 1. "For a heart attack, we have a maximum of three hours to revascularize an artery that nourishes the heart . If the women concerned wait, we will go to the complication stage or even to the stage of death at home. "
Symptoms different from those of men
How to prevent a wave of cardiovascular disease after the crisis? We must already realize, for myocardial infarction for example, that the symptoms in women are atypical compared to those of men. "As the symptoms are very specific, without chest pain for example, it can go unnoticed," points out the professor. "We have women who are diagnosed at the stage of heart failure. These women have forms of infarction that evolve at low noise, with small lesions. When they are going to tell themselves that things are not going well, we will realize that we cannot revascularize them. "
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We must therefore redouble our vigilance on the "warning signs more", such as "shortness of breath on exertion": "Women who take care of the life of the house and who are tired to do it" must question, says the specialist, who also talks about "anxiety" and "digestive symptoms". "These are not all women, but mainly women who are smokers, stressed, in social isolation, precarious, diabetic or with high blood pressure."