The Women’s Heart Center: A Tailored Model of Cardiac Care at Sheba

With heart disease the leading cause of female mortality worldwide, the center’s clinicians pair gender-aware intake with coronary function testing and long-term support to advance patient outcomes when standard care pathways may fall short. All too often, women who present with cardiac symptoms are discharged without a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Dr. Herscovici, who has directed the center for six years, says the problem is not a lack of medical knowledge, but rather a failure to apply it in women’s cardiovascular care. 

Why Women-Focused Cardiac Care Matters

Many conventional diagnostic protocols were not designed around symptom profiles common to women, and routine risk assessment at times overlooks health contributors such as reproductive history and menopause. Some of these factors have been identified as components of women’s lower heart attack recovery rates, making the gender-conscious care offered at the Women’s Heart Center essential.

Early risk factors for heart disease include pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, but disparities between the sexes also appear in the prevalence rates of specific conditions. Women with chest pain but without significant narrowing of the coronary arteries, a pattern less often observed among men, remain vulnerable to heart attack, stroke, or heart failure. Furthermore, 90% of patients hospitalized with spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) are female, and women aged 55 and older are ten times as likely as men to develop takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome.

Each of these patterns strengthens the case for cardiac care designed around women.

From Comprehensive Assessment to Personalized Treatment

Every patient referred to the Women’s Heart Center begins with a gender-aware intake covering reproductive history, pregnancy-related risk, menopause status, autoimmune conditions, psychosocial factors, and other sex-specific risk modifiers. The aim is early identification of nontraditional drivers of cardiovascular risk that bear specifically on women.

These individual patient profiles inform personal care plan design. Cardiologists work alongside interventionalists and imaging specialists, with experts in rehabilitation, clinical psychology, endocrinology, menopause, and neurology addressing the broader picture.

The center’s interlocking circles of care were built in a coordinated effort to reduce underdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, and undertreatment in women. One of the first steps was to identify diagnostics that fill gaps in how the female pattern of the disease is understood.

Where indicated, physiology-driven invasive testing allows the team to classify the precise endotype rather than label a patient’s coronaries as normal, and it forms the basis of a treatment strategy. Routine coronary function testing, including coronary flow reserve (CFR), index of microcirculatory resistance (IMR), and acetylcholine testing as appropriate, helps define vasospasm, microvascular spasm, and impaired microvascular flow. That treatment strategy is then carried forward through supportive care and a structured follow-up pathway.

Care Beyond the Diagnosis

Treatment does not stop at classification. Cardiac rehabilitation comes with exercise prescriptions adjusted to each patient’s symptom triggers, and targeted psychological care addresses anxiety, depression, and the burden of somatic symptoms. Reproductive-cardiac counseling is coordinated into the same plan, covering contraception, hormone replacement, and pregnancy risk. The aim of this combined support is symptom improvement and a better quality of life.

Beyond initial treatment at the center, follow-up is structured rather than left to chance, with pathways including symptom and functional assessments, therapy titration algorithms, and planned reassessment when symptoms persist to avoid diagnostic inertia.

A More Connected Patient Experience

What sets the center apart is continuity: one coordinated pathway carries each woman from her first intake through long-term follow-up. In practice, patients have fewer episodes of angina and fewer repeat emergency department visits.

For women whose complaints were previously dismissed as non-cardiac, Dr. Herscovici says the experience is one of “finding a home for their symptoms.”

For women whose needs may go unmet in standard care, the Women’s Heart Center offers a thorough investigation of their symptoms and ongoing care beyond diagnosis.