Women suffering a heart attack wait much longer than men to call for help and face significantly longer delays getting to a hospital, being at greater risk for adverse outcomes. According to a new study, women are associated with a higher risk of dying just because of delays in getting emergency treatment.
Overall, women were nearly twice as likely to die in the hospital compared with men, in-hospital deaths reporting 12 percent of women and 6 percent of men, shows the data that is going to be presented at the American College of Cardiology‘s 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego.
The findings also show that women were also less likely to undergo treatment to open clogged arteries compared with men (76 versus 80.4 percent), which tend to work best within the first hour after a heart attack starts.
Researchers explain that many delays they studied occurred because women simply waited longer than men to call emergency medical services (one hour compared to 45 minutes for men) and even when they hurry calling for help, they are not treated fast enough. More than 70 percent of women in the study took longer than an hour to get to a hospital that could treat them, while less than 30 percent of men took that long. The delays ranged from five minutes to three days.
There were no significant differences between men and women after being admitted in hospitals. Breaking down blood clots took 26 minutes on average for men and 28 minutes for women and a balloon angioplasty to open clogged arteries took 45 minutes on average for both men and women.
“Our findings should set off an alarm for women, who may not understand their personal risk of heart disease and may take more time to realize they are having a heart attack and need urgent medical help,” said Raffaele Bugiardini, professor of cardiology at the University of Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the study.
Women might call for help too late because don’t have the “classic” signs of a heart attack. For example, they may have shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, or pain in the back, neck or jaw instead of crushing chest pain like men. Also, these symptoms may develop slowly over hours or days and even come and go and even medical personnel could attribute symptoms to other health conditions such as indigestion.