Reuters released a scary report about some research in Scotland showing that although women are at less risk to get a heart attack than men, they are more likely to die afterward. Their research also suggests that it may be because women receive inferior health care.
The findings were published in the medical journal Heart, where a study was conducted in Scotland of over 1500 men and women between 1994 and 2000 who were admitted with a first heart attack to the hospital.
During a follow-up time period of three years, 41 percent of men and 51 percent of women died. Even though the initial inquiry showed a heightened death risk for women, this dissipated after ruling in other factors, such as smoking, age, and other diseases.
The researchers concluded that, due to their findings, “‘it is tempting to speculate’ that the survival differences reported in other studies may reflect sex bias in the way patients are treated, as well as in other factors such as age.”
Eek.
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
Unfortunately, I believe a similar issue exists here in the United States. This is due to a number of issues according to the sources I've seen: women not having been included in the initial studies on heart disease, women' s heart disease presenting differently than men's, and a lack of aggressive follow up care.
Part of the issue lies in estrogen giving women a physical/chemical advantage for many years, and then disappearing around menopause. It basically takes a while for women's heart disease to overcome that advantage and show up. And when it does, it presents differently than does men's disease. In fact, the symptoms for a heart attack in women can be completely different from men's symptoms, which leads to women not getting the immediate care that men often get. Therefore, the heart muscle is more damaged by the time treatment begins. This is not necessarily a care issue, per se, but is definitely an education issue. Most women are simply not aware of the fact that they are less likely to get the "gripping/crushing chest" symptoms, and are more likely to experience symptoms like nausea and vague chest discomfort.
I'm not entirely convinced that the issue is due to a sex bias in treatment, at least not here in the U.S., but I could agree that more study needs to be done regarding heart disease in women since there are definite differences. And more education by physicians. For a long time it was assumed that women simply didn't have heart disease in the same numbers that men do. This seems to be a mistaken notion.
I think the researchers are right to be cautious about the reasons - it's not just cover-up/denial (if that's the right reading of 'eek'?). For example, after a woman has a heart attack she may have less opportunity for rest and rehabilitation than a man. Men often have women to look after them and men don't tend to play that role well for women. So it could be worse treatment and discrimination in health services, or it might be the effects of wider discrimination or both. Also, the difference disappeared when smoking, age, and other diseases were taken into account, so this weakens a possible link to treatment discrimination on the basis of gender. There is visible discrimination in UK NHS treatment on the basis of gender, race and perhaps most obviously age - I'm just not sure this particular study is clear evidence for it.
In fact, the symptoms for a heart attack in women can be completely different from men's symptoms, which leads to women not getting the immediate care that men often get. Therefore, the heart muscle is more damaged by the time treatment begins.
This is precisely why my mother is dead instead of recovered from a heart attack. Her symptoms were not the classic shooting pains in the left arm type; she said she felt congested and thought she had the flu. So by the time she got to a hospital, it had been three days since her heart attack and by then the tissues in her heart were so shredded that open-heart surgery couldn't do anything for her.