Women’s heart disease misdiagnosed as stress?

If you have chest pain, breathlessness or an irregular heartbeat, you’d expect your doctor to check you out for heart disease. But if you’re a woman, it’s possible that might not happen. Instead, you might be told your symptoms are caused by stress.
A study presented at a recent conference looked at decisions made by 230 experienced American physicians. The study showed that doctors were more likely to put these symptoms down to stress if a woman appeared anxious, or if they knew she had been through stressful events.

When the same symptoms were presented for men, the doctors didn’t relate it to stress – and instead indicated that they would send the man to a cardiologist or start him on heart medication. Scary.
It seems pretty widely known that heart disease is not just a health issue that impacts men, so I’m curious as to why the participants in this study were so quick to attribute symptoms to stress. Does it have something to do with the longstanding tradition of labeling women as neurotic? (Just putting it out there…)
For more information on women and heart disease, click here, here, and here. Also check out the Go Red for Women campaign.
Thanks to Meredith for the link.