Key result
Women with heart failure require sex-specific cardiovascular imaging reference ranges due to unique anatomical features.
Why the study?
Heart failure involves strong sex-specific features in aetiology, clinical manifestation, morphology, and outcomes, making understanding these features important for tailored diagnostic and therapeutic management.
This review emphasizes the need for sex-specific diagnostic approaches and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of various imaging modalities in managing women with heart failure.
Supports sex-specific imaging norms in women with HF; leaves open prospective validation before practice change.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a significant threat to women's health. Heart failure (HF) is one CVD that still has an increasing incidence and about half of all cases involve women. HF is characterised by strong sex-specific features in aetiology, clinical manifestation and outcomes. Women are more likely to have hypertensive heart disease and HF with preserved ejection fraction, they experience worse quality of life but have a better overall survival rate. Women's hearts also have unique morphological characteristics that should be considered during cardiovascular assessment. It is important to understand and highlight these sex-specific features to be able to provide a tailored diagnostic approach and therapeutic management. The aim of this article is to review these aspects together with the challenges and the unique characteristics of different imaging modalities used for the diagnosis and follow-up of women with HF.
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Leo et al. (2022) conducted a review in Heart Failure. Cardiovascular imaging modalities was evaluated. Women with heart failure exhibit unique anatomical and physiological features, necessitating the use of sex-specific reference ranges across cardiovascular imaging modalities.
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