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In a post-menopausal woman, abormalities in an electrocardiogram may indicate an increased risk of heart disease and stroke in later years. It may be worth having an electrocardiogram - an ECG - if you're a post-menopausal woman to help assess your risk of heart disease. This arises from a 6 year study of several thousand women in a hormone replacement trial. At the start of the study, the women had no signs of heart disease. But if they had minor abnormalities on their ECG - things like extra beats or some small electrical problems - then over the next few years they had about a 40 per cent higher risk of developing things like heart attacks or strokes. If they had major ECG abnormalities - things like abnormal rhythms or more serious electrical issues - then they had two and a half times the risk. Hormone replacement didn't affect the findings. The older a woman, the higher her blood pressure, the fatter she was, the higher her cholesterol and whether she had diabetes increased her chances of having an abnormal ECG. But the risk increase from abnormal ECGs remained after taking these factors into account. So with more research, it may be that GPs could use the ECG to identify women who are at hidden risk of heart disease and stroke.
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