With the help of an AI model, women<\/a> at higher risk of coronary heart disease, strokes and high blood pressure could be identified earlier during routine mammograms.<\/a><\/p>\n The study involved data from 29,921 women who underwent 97,364 mammography examinations<\/a> with a median age of 54 years. <\/p>\n Clinical information on the presence of three common cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) \u2013 hypertension, ischaemic heart disease (also known as coronary artery disease) and stroke \u2013 was extracted from various sources including electronic medical records, medication prescriptions, and procedural and imaging findings. <\/p>\n The prevalence was 16 per cent for hypertension, 2.5 per cent for ischaemic heart disease and 2.5 per cent for stroke. <\/p>\n The model\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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: \u201cDespite being the leading cause of death in women worldwide, CVD is consistently under-diagnosed and under-treated.<\/p>\n \u201cA 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<\/a>, even when they haven’t sought care for cardiovascular symptoms. <\/p>\n \u201cWe investigated whether AI could help mammography serve an additional purpose in this group \u2013 the early detection of CVD \u2013 enabling preventive strategies to be implemented.\u201d <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Despite this, it\u2019s often considered a man\u2019s disease. There are more than 800,000 women in the UK living with coronary heart disease. It\u2019s estimated that around half of them have survived a heart attack.<\/p>\n![\"Routine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/04095618-f62a9431-35fd-4051-9cc3-3b10cc38ede1.jpg\")
Routine breast screenings could be used to detect heart disease, research has found<\/p>\n