Heart attacks ‘needlessly’ kill two women every day
AT LEAST two women die ‘ needlessly’ of a heart attack every day because men get better medical care, experts warn.
A report by the British heart Foundation today reveals stark differences in how the sexes are looked after due to the mistaken belief that heart attacks are a ‘man’s disease’.
The BhF found that women get treated slower, are less likely to receive life-saving scans and tests, and, even when they are discharged from hospital, many are not provided with vital drugs or access to rehabilitation programmes.
The charity’s researchers estimate that 8,243 women in england and Wales have died over a ten-year period – the equivalent of 69 a month, or more than two a day – who would have survived if they had received the same care as men.
While men are more likely to have a heart attack, with 132,000 recorded each year, women suffer 73,000 – nearly 20,000 more than are diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, a consultant cardiologist and associate medical director at the BhF, said: ‘ heart attacks have never been more treatable. Yet women are dying needlessly because heart attacks are often seen as a man’s disease, and women don’t receive the same standard of treatment as men.’
The report reveals that when women have a heart attack they often delay seeking help – taking up to seven hours and 12 minutes to arrive at hospital, compared with three hours and 30 minutes for men.
In addition, doctors are far more likely to miss their symptoms. A woman is 50 per cent more likely to initially receive an incorrect diagnosis than a man.
even when they are diagnosed correctly, women often do not get the best treatment.
They are 2.7 per cent less likely to be prescribed statins and 7.4 per cent less likely to get beta blockers when leaving hospital, despite their proven benefit of lowering the risk of a subsequent heart attack or stroke.
The BhF report – called Bias And Biology – concludes there is a stark gender divide at the centre of cardiovascular care.
Dr Babu-Narayan said the findings highlight a ‘deeply entrenched issue which manifests itself in a series of unconscious biases’, adding: ‘The studies detailed in this briefing have revealed inequalities at every stage of a woman’s medical journey. The assumption that women are not at risk of heart attack is false, and has proven to be deadly.’
The report warns that risk factors for heart disease are often more deadly for women. Smoking, for example, increases women’s heart attack risk up to twice as much as men’s; high blood pressure increases women’s risk 80 per cent more; and type 2 diabetes increases women’s risk 50 per cent more.
Dr Ghada Mikhail, a consultant interventional cardiologist at Imperial College healthcare NhS Trust in london, said: ‘Men are much more aware of the possibility of having heart disease. If men
‘Men are much more aware’
develop symptoms of chest pain, they are much more likely to call an ambulance and seek medical help. There remains still the misperception that heart disease is a man’s disease.’
Professor Chris Gale, a consultant cardiologist at the University of leeds, who has published several studies looking at women’s heart care, said: ‘On their own, the differences in care are very small, but when we look at this across the population of the UK, it adds up to a significant loss of life.
‘We need to understand more about why this is happening, and the way health systems make it more likely to happen.’