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Dr. Smolens shares if a woman’s risk for heart disease increases with a family history of heart attacks. Dr. Smolens is an experienced cardiologist at Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Arizona.
Dr. Smolens:
If you have a family history of heart disease or heart attacks, it does not guarantee that you will or won’t have heart disease. If you look back at that family member’s risk factor profile and see if there’s anything that you can modify, that’s great, and don’t follow in their footsteps. However, unfortunately sometimes genetics plays a very strong role and we can’t undo some of our genetic risk factors.
For those of you who have a strong family history of heart disease, it’s all that much more important for you to be an advocate for yourself. That’s already one strike against you in terms of risk factors that you can’t alter. So it’s all that much more important for you to look at that list of risk factors that you can alter, in terms of lifestyle modification, that you should pay heed to and correct as much as you can.
About Dr. Smolens, M.D.:
Board Certified Cardiothoracic Surgeon Iva Smolens, M.D., serves as medical director of the Women's Heart Center at Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Arizona. She currently serves on the American Heart Association’s Board of Directors for the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Keywords:
Condition: Heart Attack, Heart Palpitation, Heart Disease
Related Terms: Chest Pain, Stress Test, High Blood Pressure, HDL, LDL, Body Mass Index, Cardiovascular Exercise, Angiography, Stent, Heart Bypass Surgery, Open Heart Surgery, Vascular Disease, EKG
Expert: Dr. Iva Smolens, Iva Smolens, M.D., Doctor Iva Smolens, Cardiologist Iva Smolens
Expertise: Cardiology, Heart Specialist, Heart Disease, Cardiovascular Disease, Coronary Artery Disease, Heart Attack, Heart Palpitation