Why women are twice as likely to die from a heart attack

The diagnosis of a heart attack is always an emergency where every minute counts and is life threatening. However, the disease appears to be even more life-threatening for women than for men. Because: Your chance of dying from the event is twice that of men – regardless of age.

This is the conclusion of a Portuguese study that was recently presented at a scientific congress for cardiology in Prague. The researchers analyzed data from 884 patients (average age 62 years), of whom about a quarter (27 percent) were female.

What was initially striking was that in the group up to the age of 55, the treatment of women took longer after arrival at the clinic, so up to the operation on the narrowed coronary arteries. It took 80 minutes for men and 95 minutes for women.

The frightening result afterwards: 30 days after the heart attack, almost twelve percent of the women had died, but ‘only’ 4.6 percent of the men. Now the researchers have taken a closer look at the causes of heart attacks and classified 435 patients into specific risk groups (eg high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, high cholesterol). They then compared within the groups by gender.

Here the results were even more surprising: 11.3 percent of women died within 30 days, compared to 3.0 percent of men. After five years, one third of the women had died compared to 15.8% of the men.

The problem that women have worse recovery chances than men after a heart attack is well known. It starts with the fact that women often do not alert the ambulance as quickly as men (or men and women). The German Heart Foundation explains that women often don’t take their symptoms seriously, suppress them or don’t say them out loud.

But even if you immediately take medical responsibility, the cause of the delayed treatment is not only with you. “Even doctors are not immune to misdiagnosis and fail to recognize the true cause of the symptoms if they comment on the symptoms in an atypical manner. For example, they initially suspect stomach or digestive problems and do not think about the heart. »

And the medical staff at the hospital also contribute to delays, for example because they are less likely to send ECG results from younger women to specialists at a heart attack center for review.

The experts warn that a heart attack should also be considered a cause of symptoms in younger women. The severe chest pain characteristic of men is often less noticeable in women. They reported more of a feeling of pressure and tightness in the chest, according to the Heart Foundation. Then immediately contact an ambulance. And these symptoms are also typical of a heart attack in women.