Highlighted Research

Why focus on Women's+ Cardiovascular Health?

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of hospitalization for Canadian women and the leading cause of death for women worldwide. Although women are disproportionately impacted by certain CVD symptoms and conditions, they remain underrepresented and understudied in clinical research.

In this rapid review of the literature, we examined the use of race, ethnicity, and national origin in observational studies assessing CVD morbidity and mortality in women with a history of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

This article was published as part of the CJC Open's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Cardiovascular Disease Issue.

In this systematic review, we identified and synthesized validated case-finding definitions used to identifiy hypertensive disorders of pregnancy in administrative data.

We found that most validated CFDs identify HDP with high specificity (ie, ≥98%); however, their sensitivity varies widely—especially for those designed to identify specific HDP subtypes.

Researchers should choose the CFD(s) that best aligns with their research objective, while considering the relative importance of high sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value and/or positive predictive value and important characteristics of the validation studies from which they were derived (eg, study prevalence of HDP, spectrum of disease, methodological rigour).

Published in BMJ's Open Heart, August 2023

In this study, we explored the influence of neighborhood-level proportion of visible minorities on the prevalence of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy in Ontario from 2002-2020.

Preliminary results presented at the 2023 Canadian Women's Heart Health Summit (May, 2023, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)