- Study of more than 1,000 patients aged 18-55 who had heart attacks
- Found that after arriving in hospital, men were treated faster than women
- Women had to wait for life-saving procedures six to ten minutes longer than recommended safe guidelines
- Women who were very ‘feminine’ were even less likely to be treated promptly
By
Kate Lyons
01:20 EST, 19 March 2014
|
04:22 EST, 19 March 2014
If you are rushed to hospital after suffering a heart attack your chance of getting prompt treatment might depend on whether you are a man or a woman.
New research from McGill University in Canada suggests that men aged 18-55 receive faster treatment than women of the same age when they arrive at an emergency room presenting with acute coronary syndrome.
The standard waiting time for an ECG, which is used to confirm heart attack, was 21 minutes for women, compared to 15 minutes for men. Medical guidelines recommend that an ECG is given within 10 minutes of a patient’s arrival at the hospital.
Alarming new research has found that women who have heart attacks are forced to wait longer in for treatment in hospital for than men are
The guidelines also specify that fibrinolysis, in which a drug is injected to unblock clogged arteries, should be administered within 30 minutes of arrival at hospital. Male patients received the injections after waiting 28 minutes, whereas women waited an average of 36 minutes.
The study, which was released on Monday, examined 1,123 patients at 24 Canadian, one American and one Swiss hospital.
Another surprising finding of the study was that a person exhibiting pronounced ‘feminine’ traits was more likely to be ignored by triage nurses or doctors than someone showing ‘masculine’ traits.
The ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ of patients was measured using the Bem Sex Role Inventory, a questionnaire used by psychologists in which participants say how strongly they identify with certain stereotypically male or female qualities.
Patients who were more strongly ‘feminine’ according to the inventory, received much slower treatment from doctors than people who were more ‘masculine’ according to the test.
One of the researchers, Roxanne Pelletier of the McGill University Health Centre, told the Montreal Gazette that doctors probably do not deliberately discriminate against female patients.
However, she said that stereotypes, like a woman being less assertive about her symptoms, might lead health professionals ‘to initially dismiss a cardiac event in a young woman who presents to the ER.’
Such time delays were very serious, she said: ‘Time is muscle. If it takes longer to unblock the obstructed arteries, then a bigger part of the heart will die, and this is significant.’
The Canadian study found that ‘feminine’ women had to wait even longer to see a doctor, costing precious time that could be doing serious damage to their health
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