Coronary heart disease kills twice as many women as breast cancer in the UK each year
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Routine breast screenings aided by artificial intelligence could be used to detect heart disease, new research has found.
With the help of an AI model, women at higher risk of coronary heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure could be identified earlier during routine mammograms.
The study involved data from 29,921 women who underwent 97,364 mammography examinations with a median age of 54 years.
Clinical information on the presence of three common cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) – hypertension, ischaemic heart disease (also known as coronary artery disease) and stroke – was extracted from various sources including electronic medical records, medication prescriptions, and procedural and imaging findings.
The prevalence was 16 per cent for hypertension, 2.5 per cent for ischaemic heart disease and 2.5 per cent for stroke.
The model’s ability to distinguish between women with and without each cardiovascular condition was evaluated using areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC), where values range from 0.5 for random guessing to 1.0 for perfect discrimination.
Presenting their research at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting in Munich, scientists from Tel Aviv University found the initial model performed well, yielding AUROCs of 0.79 for hypertension, 0.78 for ischaemic heart disease and 0.86 for stroke. The results were consistent when considering cancer status and age.
Dr Viana Copeland from Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Gan, Israel, explained why new detection methods are needed for CVD in women: “Despite being the leading cause of death in women worldwide, CVD is consistently under-diagnosed and under-treated.
“A common finding in our medical centre, and around the world, is that when women do seek medical help, their CVD is already advanced. On the other hand, many women do attend routine breast cancer screening, even when they haven't sought care for cardiovascular symptoms.
“We investigated whether AI could help mammography serve an additional purpose in this group – the early detection of CVD – enabling preventive strategies to be implemented.”
Coronary heart disease, the main cause of heart attacks, kills twice as many women as breast cancer in the UK each year, and was the single biggest killer of women worldwide in 2023, according to the British Heart Foundation.
Despite this, it’s often considered a man’s disease. There are more than 800,000 women in the UK living with coronary heart disease. It’s estimated that around half of them have survived a heart attack.
Commenting on the findings, Associate Professor** **Elena Arbelo, Member of the ESC Communication Committee, said: “As both a cardiologist and a woman, I find this concept compelling: a mammogram may one day do more than look for breast cancer − it may also offer a window onto cardiovascular health.
“That matters because CVD in women is still too often recognised late. It is great to see innovative AI studies being presented at ESC Congress 2026, aiming to address unmet needs. The challenge now is to establish accuracy and reliability − to move from experimentation to clinical implementation.”
Symptoms of a heart attack include:
- pain or discomfort in your chest that happens suddenly and does not go away
- pain that spreads to either arm, your neck, jaw, upper back or stomach
- feeling sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath.
Other less common symptoms include:
- suddenly feeling anxious, similar to a panic attack
- severe tummy (abdominal) pain
- lots of coughing or wheezing.
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