Women are more likely than men to die after suffering a heart attack complicated by cardiogenic shock, a condition in which the heart can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs, a new study shows.
Published in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, the study includes 2000-2017 data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's National Inpatient Sample. Researchers analyzed data on 90,648 patients, between 18 and 55 years, who suffered heart attacks and cardiogenic shock. Twenty-six percent of the patients were women.
Researchers found that women were 11 percent more likely to die in the hospital than men.
They also found that women were significantly less likely than men to receive coronary angiography, a procedure to detect blockages in heart arteries — 78.3 percent vs. 81.4 percent, respectively. Only 59.2 percent of women were treated with procedures such as stents or balloons to open blockages in the arteries of their heart, compared to 64 percent of men.
In addition, slightly more than 50 percent of women had their heart function temporarily supplemented using a mechanical pump versus nearly 60 percent of men.
"As clinicians, we need to understand the likely multiple motivators and factors, both individual and system-based, that might lead to unconscious bias," said Saraschandra Vallabhajosyula, MD, lead author of the study and a clinical fellow in interventional cardiology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
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