A new study has found that women wait longer than men for heart attack treatment.
According to the Globe and Mail, the report was concentrated in Canada but included one hospital in both the U.S. and Switzerland and looked at 1,100 patients between the ages of 18 and 55 who were booked into hospitals for heart attacks and angina.
Only 29 percent of women received an electrocardiogram in less than 10 minutes, whereas nearly 40 percent of men did. Similarly, only 32 percent of women received clot-busting drugs in less than 30 minutes, while about 60 percent of men did.
What is causing this alarming health disparity? Are doctors just biased against women? Not exactly. The study does not suggest that blatant discrimination is to blame. However, there may be a more unconscious bias at play.
The problem lies in the ways that we’ve been taught to identify heart attack symptoms. Heart attacks often affect men and women in different ways. Most people are familiar with the following symptoms: pain on the left side, extreme chest pain, etc. In fact, many women in cardiac arrest do not experience chest pain. More common symptoms for women include shortness of breath, dizziness, upper back pressure and the sensation of acid reflux.
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Unfortunately, due to this lack of awareness, many women experiencing heart problems will put their lives at greater risk, simply because they don’t know that their symptoms correlate with heart attacks. There needs to be a revamp of the heart health awareness campaign to include the differences between men and women in experiencing heart failure.
Beyond that, doctors need to also be at higher alert for what these symptoms may mean. The way men experience heart attacks has become the standard for diagnosis and there needs to be a heightened awareness of women’s symptoms. Granted, some of these characteristics can be symptomatic of other issues, but that still does not account for such a large disparity.
Dr. Robert Reid, deputy chief of the division of prevention and rehabilitation at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, said doctors and other health providers need to be more aware that women are different than men, but that their risk of heart disease is just as serious.
“Hopefully, if there are biases that are built in … we can understand them and kind of compensate for them appropriately,” Reid said.
Awareness is needed. This news is especially alarming for Black women who are already at higher risk for heart disease and more likely to die of heart disease than white women.
Help spread this information to others and hopefully change the culture of heart problem diagnosis.