Female doctors improve heart attack survival rates for women? Women undergoing cardiac arrest have a lower chance of survival than when they receive treatment from a female doctor. If you’re a woman facing a heart attack, both your gender and the gender of your physician can play pivotal roles in determining your likelihood of survival.
Recent research reveals that women experiencing heart attacks tend to wait over 30 percent longer than men, from when they first encounter symptoms to when they arrive at a hospital. Furthermore, women also experience a 20 percent longer delay from arrival at the hospital to initiating medical care.
Even when medical attention commences, women suffering from heart attacks are less likely to receive many of the same treatments as their male counterparts. Moreover, if the attending physician is male—considering the current distribution—.
Each gap in care contributes to deteriorating health outcomes.
Heart disease was primarily considered a male ailment for a substantial period, but today, it is the leading cause of death among women in the United States. One in three deaths is attributed to heart disease, and since 1984, more women have succumbed to heart disease annually than men.
Why is This Occurring?
A recent study featured in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America has thrust gender-based disparities in heart attack medical care into the spotlight.
This research spotlights “patient-physician gender concordance,” which explores how a physician’s gender affects patient outcomes.
The study delves into the survival rates of heart attack patients treated at Florida hospitals between 1991 and 2010, examining the gender of the treating physician. The findings indicate that male physicians treated female patients had lower survival rates.
Moreover, the research reveals that female patients treated by female physicians had survival rates 2 to 3 times higher than those treated by their male counterparts.
While the reasons behind this disparity remain unclear, the authors offer some insights.
“Gender concordance often fosters communication between patients and physicians, meaning that male patients might not be receiving the necessary signals from female patients to diagnose the heart attack,” explained Brad Greenwood, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of information and decision sciences at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. “It’s possible that women feel more at ease advocating for themselves when receiving care from a female physician.”
They also propose that because women exhibit distinct symptoms for heart attacks compared to men when they arrive at the hospital, male physicians may not promptly identify and treat the condition with the same level of urgency.
“We’ve long held the notion of the ‘Hollywood heart attack,’ envisioning a heart attack as involving severe chest pain,” noted Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative and the Director of Women’s Cardiovascular Prevention, Health, and Wellness at Mt. Sinai Heart in New York City. “However, women’s heart disease often presents more subtly.”
Female heart attack symptoms can vary but often encompass:
- Fatigue
- Symptoms resembling the flu
- Shortness of breath
- Nausea
- Pain in the jaw or neck
Steinbaum strongly encourages women experiencing these symptoms to voice their concerns when seeking medical attention at the hospital.
“I want every woman to walk into the emergency room and assert, ‘I’m concerned this might be a heart issue.’ Expressing this initiates a series of actions, leading to a quicker diagnosis and immediate access to life-saving treatment,” she emphasized.
The study also provides some promising insights into male physicians becoming more attentive to their female patients. The authors highlight that the number of female patients a male physician treats directly correlates with improved outcomes for those patients.
In essence, the greater the number of female patients a male physician cares for, the higher the survival rates become for female patients under that male doctor’s care in the future.
The presence of female physicians also holds significance. Researchers observed that male physicians achieved improved survival rates with female patients when there was a higher proportion of female physicians.
“The exact reasons for this effect are somewhat speculative,” explained Greenwood. “It could be that a female physician informs the male physician, saying, ‘Hey, this might be a heart attack.’ Alternatively, the male physician might observe the practices of their female counterparts and passively learn from them.”
Addressing Gender Disparities
Beyond gender concordance concerns, an examination in the journal Current Cardiology Reports exposes additional disparities in heart attack care between men and women.
One particularly concerning statistic is that women face a more than 30 percent longer wait time from the onset of initial symptoms to their arrival at a hospital than men. Furthermore, there is an additional 20 percent increased wait time from hospital arrival to receiving medical intervention, which deeply troubles Steinbaum.
These statistics deeply distress Steinbaum, who remarks, “They bother me beyond belief.”
Several factors contribute to these time discrepancies. Firstly, women may not be aware that their heart attack symptoms typically differ from those experienced by men. Steinbaum explains, “If a woman doesn’t recognize she’s having a heart attack, she won’t seek emergency room care. If she isn’t aware that her symptoms are distinctive, she won’t seek medical attention.”
According to Steinbaum, awareness serves as the initial line of defense for many female patients, and more information about heart attack symptoms is becoming increasingly accessible to women.
Nonetheless, Steinbaum finds the delay in care upon hospital arrival the most troubling aspect. When a woman seeks assistance for a heart attack, those helping her often inadvertently delay her treatment.
The “door-to-balloon times,” which measure how quickly a heart attack patient receives life-saving angioplasty, are crucial indicators of heart attack survival. A door-to-balloon time of under 90 minutes is a benchmark for quality heart attack care.
Even when women receive heart attack treatment, they may not receive the same level of care as men. The review indicates that women are less likely to be prescribed ACE inhibitors, statins, and aspirin.
Steinbaum emphasizes that women are more prone to experiencing another heart attack within the following year and are at a greater risk of developing heart failure. Consequently, their outcomes often reflect disparities in treatment.
Despite the sobering reality painted by these statistics, there have been notable improvements.
Over the past two decades, women have grown considerably more conscious of their heart health.
A significant 2012 study by the American Heart Association revealed a noteworthy shift: in 1997, women were more inclined to mention cancer rather than cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death (35 percent versus 30 percent). However, by 2012, this trend had reversed, with 56 percent acknowledging cardiovascular disease as the primary killer, compared to 24 percent for cancer.
Nonetheless, specific groups of women continue to face higher risks. Awareness of cardiovascular health and heart attack susceptibility still lags among African American and Hispanic women compared to their white counterparts.
Greenwood emphasized the importance of diversity in his research, stating, “If there’s one key takeaway from this paper, in my interpretation, it’s the significance of diversity. When the physician population reflects a broader range of perspectives, closely mirroring the patient demographics, superior outcomes are achieved.”
However, until gender-related disparities are entirely eradicated, Steinbaum urges women to take charge of their own health.
“Female patients need to recognize the vital importance of advocating for themselves,” Steinbaum emphasized. “As women, we must prioritize self-care from an early stage because, in 80 percent of cases, this devastating disease that claims more women’s lives than men’s can be prevented.”