Women Shortchanged on Heart Attack Care
Reported January 18, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire)
— Women are continuing to get the short end of the stick when it comes to care for a heart attack despite new national and international guidelines, according to a new study.
British researchers studied nearly 5,000 men and women who were measured for cardiac troponin T levels, which are known to be higher in patients suffering from a heart attack. Researchers studied the patients a full year after the publication of new guidelines, which emphasized even small increases in troponin levels could lead to a heart attack.
Results show doctors diagnosed 561 heart attacks during the one-year study and more than 90 percent of patients were found to have elevated troponin levels. However, more than 1,300 patients overall had higher-than-normal troponin levels over that time period, and among that group, women were 40-percent less likely to leave the hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack than men.
The authors say many physicians are clinging to the age-old belief that women are less likely to suffer a heart attack than men. Their finding that women are less likely to receive a heart attack diagnosis adds to previous work showing that once diagnosed, women are less likely than men to receive the aggressive treatment they need to recover.
Authors conclude, “Until now, sex bias has only been identified in the management of females after a diagnosis of MI [myocardial infarction] has already been made. This study has now provided the first evidence that women seem less likely to be diagnosed with an MI in the first place.”
SOURCE: Heart, 2005;91:237-238