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Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female (scientificamerican.com)
Women who suffer from heart attacks may be at a higher risk of death in the emergency room if they see a male physician rather than a female one, a new study suggests. The study doesn't jump to conclusions, but doctors and cardiologists have a few theories. There could be a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients' complaints as readily as [those of] a man, or there could be a bias that favors men in the medical literature, leading to misdiagnoses in women. It may also be that female doctors do a better job than their male counterparts. "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician, and a study published last year [...] indicated all patients of female physicians had lower mortality and hospital readmission rates," reports Scientific American. From the report: Heart disease is the number-one killer of both men and women, but the latter are significantly less likely to survive heart attacks. According to 2016 American Heart Association statement, 26 percent of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with just 19 percent of men. The gap widens with time: By five years after a heart attack almost half of women die, compared with 36 percent of men. The reason has eluded researchers for years, but the authors of the new study point to the disparity in male and female representation in emergency doctors as a potential source of answers. The researchers analyzed a Florida Agency for Health Care Administration database containing every heart attack case from every ER in the state (excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals) between 1991 and 2010.
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. "All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study and a data scientist at the University of Minnesota. If a heart attack patient is a woman and her emergency physician is a man, he says, her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors. This means approximately one out of every 66 women with heart attacks dies in the emergency room if she sees a male doctor rather than a female one.
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. "All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study and a data scientist at the University of Minnesota. If a heart attack patient is a woman and her emergency physician is a man, he says, her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors. This means approximately one out of every 66 women with heart attacks dies in the emergency room if she sees a male doctor rather than a female one.
Same way men will lie about their problems so as not to appear lesser. Nothing says women don't have pride.
It's odd that you don't see that it would still be the same study. Men survive more than women if the doctor is male, and women survive more than men if the doctor is female. There's plenty for both party's fanatics to be butt-hurt about, I guess you just decided to pick one.
A partner of mine suffered from agoraphobia terribly, sometimes suffering anxiety and tachycardia with HR over 220 for extended periods. Counseling, medication, nothing seemed to be effective, and she was a highly-skilled RN, just adding to her frustration. It ruined our relationship long before it became so debilitating she was considering changing her career.
One attack landed her in the ER and in front of the new-in-town cardiologist fresh from residency in a well-known hospital. According to the ER nurse he took a two minute look at the EKG, ordered tests stat, another two minute read, and was on the phone back to his residency hospital, booking air evac, and sending her to his mentor.
She had a conduction defect. Not merely undetected for her entire life, but actually ruled out by more than one cardiologist previously, certain she was just having panic attacks. Yes, this caused a few uncomfortable discussions, and this fresh new cardiologist left the area and joined a big-city practice, for he had stumbled into a nice, quiet city that loved its doctors, and did not appreciate having them called out as having missed one diagnosis.
Why? Well, first, women were once considered 'hysterical' beings, prone to problems that were psychological and not physical. This is hard to overcome, even generations later. And much heart disease is, even today, considered a male problem, as if women all eat well, suffer less stress, and are not physically active.
How many have died needlessly?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.