Do Male Heart Attack Patients Receive Faster Care? Study

A recent study shows how some medical providers may discriminate against women when it comes to giving heart attack treatment.

For the study, researchers recruited 1,123 patients from 24 centers within Canada, one center from the United States and one more from Switzerland, all between the ages of 18 and 55. Most of the female participants on average were around 50, while most men had a median age of 49. Sixty-eight percent of the participants were male and 32 percent were female. 

Researchers collected information on the level of care by administering surveys to patients within 24 hours after hospitalization. Questions from the survey were related to gender specific issues as well as education level and health status before a heart attack or angina. 

Study results showed that women with lower incomes suffered from higher levels of anxiety, depression and were more likely to have a history of diabetes, hypertension or heart disease in their family. 

The results also found that male patients generally received electrogardiograms (ECGs) and fibrinolysis faster than most female patients who were the same age. On average, men received ECG care within 15 minutes, while it took 28 minutes for women. For fibrinolysis, men received care after 21 minutes while it took 36 minutes for women. 

"Anxiety was associated with failure to meet the 10-minute benchmark for ECG in women but not in men," said Dr. Louise Pilote, clinician-researcher, Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), Montréal, and professor of medicine at McGill University, via a press release. "Patients with anxiety who present to the emergency department with noncardiac chest pain tend to be women, and the prevalence of acute coronary syndrome is lower among young women than among young men. These findings suggest that triage personnel might initially dismiss a cardiac event among young women with anxiety, which would result in a longer door-to-ECG interval."

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the article "Sex-related differences in access to care among patients with premature acute coronary syndrome," which was published in Canadian Medical Association Journal.