Women who suffer from heart attacks are half as likely as men to receive the recommended medical treatment, a new study has claimed.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh investigated how 48,000 people responded to the use of high sensitivity troponin blood tests, which were calibrated differently for women and men.
Just under half (47 per cent) were women, had gone to Accident and Emergency hospitals in Scotland after suffering from chest pain. Following the troponin blood test, a similar proportion of women (22 per cent) and men (21 per cent) were found to be suffering from a heart attack or injury.
However, despite their diagnoses, it was discovered that the female patients suffering from heart attack or injury were half as likely as the male patients to receive adequate treatment.
Only 15 per cent of the female patients were fitted with a stent, in comparison to 34 per cent of the male patients.
Meanwhile 26 per cent of the women were treated with dual antiplatelet therapy, in comparison to 43 per cent of the men, and 16 per cent of the women received preventative treatments such as statins, in comparison to 26 per cent of the men.
The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The study follows recent research also funded by the BHF that found that a “heart attack gender gap” caused around 8,000 women in England and Wales to needlessly die over a 10-year period, as they did not receive the same treatment as men.
Dr Ken Lee, clinical research fellow at the BHF and author of the latest study at the University of Edinburgh, stated the the diagnosis of a heart attack “is only one piece of the puzzle”.
