Women and heart attack

[Fraggling]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49854678

In the news yet again.
This has been reported in mainstream press for a couple of years at least now.
New study says 8000 women a year dying unnecessarily due to unconscious bias/ poor treatment.

Still.

I know change is hard and unconscious bias is unconscious but given the fact this isn't niche or new info, I'd hope that improvements might come quicker.

Really depressing. For me the unconscious bias across the board at bottom line is that women are just less important than men, and this drives so much, from gender (sex) pay gap to bearing the brunt of cuts to bring expected to enter/ leave employment depending on what the economy needs and to ensure men are employed.

Calling it a gender gap of course is not useful. If I feel like a man inside will I get better treatment? Course not.

I was a bit pissed off that it was described as women failing to recognise the symptoms, not as the medical establishment failing to notice/care that women have different symptoms to men, and thus women - and apparently quite a few doctors - are not widely educated on the symptoms of heart attacks in women.

Being involved in cardiology my experience is that it is a bit of both. Doctors not fully recognising symptoms and women the same so delaying getting help.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez is good on women's health care - and everything!!

Tableclothing I noticed that too. I was the first thing mentioned, women not realising, women not getting help. The other stuff about medical failings came later.

So if you just read the first bit, you'd go away thinking it was women's own fault.

Agree that was not well done.

The real kicker about that article is that it then repeats the classic symptoms for male heart attack at the end of the article. Fuckwits! 🤦‍♀️ Talk about a missed learning opportunity.

I don't see failing to recognise the symptoms as casting the blame at women, it's well recognised that failing to recognise symptoms is a big problem, hence campaigns such as the stroke awareness one.
The failing would then be for not educating women enough.
The headline is "inequalities in health care" so it is really pointing the blame at the system.

At the end it says feeling lightheaded, hot and sweaty are signs for a woman.
Well as a menopausal woman thats every day for me.

It found that some commonly held myths - such as heart disease and heart attacks only affecting men

There is also a misperception that men and women experience completely different heart attack symptoms

I was unaware of these myths. I always thought heart attacks affect men more often (they do) but that symptoms were the same. I expected the article to surprise me by saying there were different signs for women that most were unaware of.

This was also covered on Sky News today, and I think they also did it about a month ago. I'm sure they said the symptoms are different for man and women

Symptoms can be different for men and women

And i think more women die from a heart attack...think

And i think more women die from a heart attack...think

I'm pretty sure more men die in pure numbers terms.
But it may be that a higher proportion of women affected die.

Yes that’s probably it dey

I read more women die from a heart attack than breast cancer...which took me aback

Heart disease is the biggest killer of both men and women.
I have worked in the field, so maybe that's why it didn't surprise me.

Yes more men have heart attacks than women and more men die pure numbers.

However the women who have heart attacks are much more likely to die than men who have heart attacks due to points in article.

I found it interesting as well that they said many believe myths about presenting differently. But all of the articles including on BBC over last couple of years have said, oh women heart attack presents differently and that's why they are dying so much... So not clear at all. What they stated as latest research a few months ago is now a myth? Don't they mean the previous research has been shown not to be accurate?

Deydodo I don't think it surprised too many people as it's been in the news a lot over the last couple of years.

Do you have any more insights into how women are being let down?

This came up on another thread recently and was the first I knew of differences between the sexes. I'm a first aider at work, we do a refresher course every three years, always with the Red Cross, and my last course was in March of this year. This was not mentioned so first aid is another area that needs to be educated on this matter.

Do you have any more insights into how women are being let down?

Not too many.
Risk factors are always: age, male, smoker, obese, diabetes.
In clinical trials, inclusion criteria are always male and female, except for pregnant females, who are almost always excluded from clinical trials.
In trials, number of male to female are often around 80% male, just due to patient numbers, so I guess because of that fewer females are studied, but analysis always considers male - female differences and I'm not aware of any.
I suppose, because being male is such a big risk factor, healthcare professionals suspect heart attack more readily in men but less often in women?
In which case, they need educating to consider this.

Women are just not taken seriously medically full stop. We’re so often palmed off with antidepressants and told we are being hysterical. This actually happened to me over a one year period - I was prescribed diazepam and citalopram and was told all my issues were caused by anxiety. I actually had Addison’s disease which is fatal if left untreated- I only found out because I went to see a private endocrinologist as a last resort.