Coronary Heart Disease Not a Cheery Condition

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And women with heart disease "expect to be healthier, so they think their quality of life is more impaired," she said.

But Dr. Winston H. Gandy Jr., a spokesman for the American Heart Association, said that women and minorities feel worse about their heart disease, because their treatment isn't always as good as it could be.

"Disparities exist in the delivery of care," said Gandy, who is director of the Echo/Vascular Center of Excellence of Piedmont Health Institute in Atlanta. "Women and African-Americans in particular present for treatment much later in the course of their disease."

Gandy found a bright side to the study. Results would have been much worse 20 or 30 years ago, before artery-opening techniques such as bypass surgery and angioplasty were commonplace, he said.

"In the early 1980s, there was not a lot of therapy for those issues," Gandy said. "If you had a coronary event, you would be in the hospital for a week and off work for a month. Fast forward to today, and, all of a sudden, we have people who have a heart attack or blockage, get angioplasty today and are home tomorrow."

Ask those people how they feel, and the answer might not be cheerful, Gandy said. "But I'm very encouraged that we have all these people living longer to be around to enjoy their children and grandchildren," he said.

More information

Coronary heart disease and its treatment are described by the U.S. Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.