Women experience worse post-heart attack treatment than men

 

According to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Sydney, women in Australia receive worse medical treatment than men for common heart attacks.

 

The study discovered that women who were diagnosed with unstable angina, or a common type of heart attack, received "less evidence-based treatment" than men, either immediately or over time.

 

The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, examined a database of 7,783 patients from forty-three hospitals across the country who were diagnosed with unstable angina or heart attacks medically identified as non-ST elevation myocardial infarctions between 2009 and 2018. (non-STEMIs).

 

The report suggests "physician biases" in Australia's medical care, according to lead researcher David Brieger, a physician and professor of cardiology at the University of Sydney.

 

Brieger stated that the treatment for these conditions differed greatly between men and women "every step of the way."

 

"Regardless of how we think we're behaving, we're still innately conservative and under-treating women for whatever reason," he said.

 

"I believe we need to be aware of this and address it consciously."

 

Approximately 31% of the patients in the study were female.

 

Non-ST elevation myocardial infarctions are considered severe diagnoses, but they are not as harmful as ST-elevation myocardial infarctions, for which women are half as likely to receive proper hospital treatment.

 

Patients with non-STEMIs are frequently advised to have an angiogram, which is an imaging technique used to detect blockages in the patients' coronary arteries.

 

According to David Brieger's research, women were given angiograms at a lower rate than men, and the women who did received them later.

 

"We're not sure if that reflects the fact that they arrived at the hospital later or if the decision to perform the angiogram was delayed in some way," Brieger said.

 

According to research, women who have a heart attack may experience different symptoms than men, such as sweating, nausea, and fatigue. Women are also more likely than men to have their cardiac symptoms misdiagnosed.

 

Previous research has revealed existing disparities between men and women when it comes to long-term medical care.

 

"Once a person has had a coronary event, they should all be discharged on evidence-based treatments," Brieger said.

 

His team at the University of Sydney discovered that women were less likely to be given a variety of common therapies, such as beta blockers, aspirin, anti-platelet drugs, and statins — medication that lowers cholesterol levels in the blood.

 

Brieger stated that the angiograms his team examined revealed that women had less significant obstructions of their coronary arteries than men, implying that "... they're less likely to require stents and a bypass." However, we discovered that this also contributed to a lower likelihood of receiving medical therapies."

 

"To our surprise," Brieger continued, "even if they did have blockages, they still received less treatment."

 

"Even if we don't find tight blockages in the arteries, we know that women who have these [heart attacks] are more likely to have further events."

 

"Putting them on these medications will keep these events from happening in the future."

 

Women were also less likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation, "which is also very important in restoring them back to pre-event functional capacity and ensuring better long-term outcomes," according to Brieger.

 

A study published in the Medical Journal of Cardiology by Oxford University last October discovered that young women may be more likely than men to die in the decade following a heart attack.

 

Only 400 of the 2100 heart attack patients treated in two Boston hospitals were women, according to the study. However, female patients were more likely to die in the long run than male patients.