Women more likely to die of heart attack if doc is male

Patients who accepted infected kidneys cured of hep C

TAMPA, Aug 7, (Agencies): Women suffering heart attacks in hospital emergency rooms in the United States are more likely to die if their doctor is a man than a woman, warned a study Monday.

The study was based on more than 500,000 patients admitted to hospital emergency departments for acute myocardial infarction—a medical term for heart attack—in Florida between 1991 and 2010.

Researchers at Harvard University found a “stark” difference in survival according to whether the patient’s and doctor’s gender matched.

Namely, when women were treated by female doctors, “there was a significant and positive effect” on survival, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Almost 12 percent of patients die when rushed for emergency treatment for a heart attack.

Matching female doctors to female patients “reduced the probability of death by 5.4 percent, relative to this baseline,” it said.

By another way of looking at the data, “female patients treated by male physicians were 1.52 percent less likely to survive than male patients treated by female physicians.”

Previous studies have shown that women are more likely than men to die of heart attacks.

But why? Some experts have sug- gested it may be because women’s symptoms are different than men’s, or that they tend to delay treatment more often than men.

This study offers a new explanation for why gender inequality in heart attack mortality persists.

“Most physicians are male, and male physicians appear to have trouble treating female patients,” said the report.

Twelve weeks of hepatitis treatment cleared the virus in all 20 patients tested so far. Compared to patients who received uninfected organs, their new kidneys work just as well, even a year after the procedure. Merck & Co, helped fund the research and provided the pills in the study. Results were published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Kiran Shelat, a 65-year-old civil engineer from Yardley, Pennsylvania, had spent two years on the transplant waiting list before signing up for the experiment.

He now feels energetic, and can work out in the gym and attend family events. So far, there’s no sign of the virus in his bloodstream.

“This is a lifesaver,” Shelat said. “Get off the list; get the kidney. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Transplant specialists are keeping a watchful eye.

“As long as the patient accepts the risk, I support this,” said Dr Josh Levitsky, a professor of organ transplantation at Northwestern University who is not part of the team.

Getting an infected kidney may outweigh the burden of dialysis, which many patients find physically exhausting, said Dr Matthew Cooper, a transplant surgeon at Georgetown University Hospital.