Women's Health Fears Often Don't Line Up With Reality

July 7, 2005 — -- A new study finds the diseases women fear are not necessarily the disease they are most likely to die from.

Women were most afraid of cancer in general, the Society for Women's Health Research survey found, but in fact heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women in America. Only about 10 percent of women said heart disease was their biggest fear. This figure is up from 5 percent in 2002.

"It's good news that the percentage of women who fear heart disease has raised significantly," said Dr. Paula Johnson, chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Although clearly there's a ways to go."

Of all cancers, breast cancer was the most feared, far outweighing the fears of all other cancers combined. "It's a tribute to the breast cancer groups that they've been able to get their message out there," said Sherry Marts, of the Society for Women's Health Research in Washington, D.C., the group that conducted the survey.

But while breast cancer does kill almost 40,000 women a year, it is not the deadliest form of the disease. That dubious title belongs to lung cancer, which claims the lives of nearly 70,000 women a year.

Lung cancer ranked seventh among women's biggest health fears. Lung diseases such as emphysema were conspicuously absent from the list of fears, though they rank fourth in the list of fatal disease.

There were mismatched fears among other cancers as well. Women were more fearful of ovarian cancer than colon cancer, though colon cancer kills almost twice as many women.

"For women, it's sort of a reality check," Marts said. She worries that women have tended to ignore their risk for diseases such as lung and colon cancer, which are more often associated with men.

Marts says that despite these misconceptions, it is important that women are aware of their cancer risks and are openly talking about the subject. "In my mother's generation, you couldn't even say the word."