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Dr. Suzanne Sorof
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VIDEO: Three Reasons Why Woman Should Undergo A Stress Test From Dr. Sorof

Dr. Suzanne Sorof explains why stress tests are beneficial to a woman’s heart health.

Dr. Sorof:
Ladies, there are three reasons why women need to have a stress test. It is a screening tool such as a mammogram or a colonoscopy. As we get older, go through menopause, our vessels and vasculature change. You do need to be evaluated. The thinking was that a standard treadmill stress test would be the way to go.

However, because of women’s hormone levels and their body habitus it is often not as accurate or sensitive as they are in male, the male counterparts. Therefore, imaging such as an echocardiogram or a nuclear component of the stress test are warranted and they should be done especially if a women is not able to exercise, she is not in fit shape, imaging should be added, and that gives somebody a much higher sensitivity and specificity to the tests in women.

The testing is not necessarily different between men and women but sometimes we need additional things, additional images, and actually looking at the heart muscle when it’s under stress rather than just reading it through an EKG because of a woman’s body habitus and their hormone levels, often times it’s just not enough to do a treadmill test and you need additional images in order to help a cardiologist see a heart while it’s going underneath the stress levels.

About Dr. Sorof, M.D.:
Dr. Suzanne Sorof, M.D., is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in Cardiology and Internal Medicine. She earned her medical degree at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She also completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine Affiliated Hospitals Residency Program. Dr. Sorof completed her cardiology fellowship at MetroHealth Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She then completed a fellowship in interventional cardiology at Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Sorof has extensive training and experience in all aspects of clinical cardiology as well as cardiac and peripheral intervention.

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