[Family status and coronary heart disease in the female]

This is an overview of the literature analysing the international level of knowledge about the influence of marital status on the coronary heart disease of women. Divorced and widowed women show a greater coronary risk than never married and married women, as some studies show. But there are also studies, which found no correlation between marital status and morbidity and mortality of coronary heart disease. In the multifactorical genesis of the coronary heart disease of women the marital status does not play the role of a definitive risk factor, but affects above all as a confounder of many psychosocial and coronary risk factors and there by influences the coronary risk of women.