Young Women Face Worse Health Outcomes Following Heart Attack

Women suffer worse health outcomes following heart attacks as compared to men, a new study reveals.

Researchers at the Yale University based their fining on the evaluation of 230,000 patients hospitalized for suffering acute myocardial infraction (AMI). The patients were aged between 30-54 years and were tracked from 2001-2010. They noticed that young women had worse health outcomes than men. The study was led by Dr. Harlan Krumholz director of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

Apart from this, the researchers also looked at the age and sex-related differences in the rate of hospitalization and patients' outcome after AMI, based of age and gender.

An acute myocardial infraction is the sudden or gradual onset of discomfort in the anterior chest and is the medical name for heart attack.

The researchers noticed that though the rate of hospitalization was high in men, it was the women who stayed at the hospitals for a longer duration, with more comorbidities and had higher-in-hospital mortality rates.

Between 2001-2010, the researchers noticed that the rate of hospitalization for AMI was same for the both genders and there was 20 percent drop in hospitalization rate among older patients.

"It is concerning that hospitalization rates for heart attack in the young have not shown any reduction, suggesting that lack of awareness and poorer control of cardiovascular risk factors - including diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking may be responsible," said Aakriti Gupta, a resident at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author on this paper.

The researchers are working to trace the gender-specific biological, clinical and social factors underlying the higher risk linked with heart attacks in young women.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.