Women ‘more likely to die from heart attacks than men’

Women are presently at a much higher risk of dying from a heart attack than men, according to a study presented at the 2012 Acute Cardiac Care Congress.

Analysis of the Orbi patient registry – which includes 5,000 ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients from the Brittany region of France – found significant differences in the management and outcome of the condition according to gender.

Women were shown to experience longer delays between symptom onset and calling for medical assistance, and between admission and reperfusion, while intra-hospital mortality was higher among females.

Moreover, women tend to suffer from more complications such as atrial fibrillation and longer hospital stays, as well as receiving less of the recommended treatments at discharge.

Dr Guillaume Leurent of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Rennes said: "Doctors need to be more careful in the management of STEMI in women to further reduce ischaemic time. This means adopting more aggressive reperfusion strategies and treating women the same as men."

The British Heart Foundation responded to the findings by noting that heart disease is the single biggest killer of women in the UK, causing three times as many female fatalities as breast cancer.