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A new study that looked at heart failure found that your gender affects your treatment. Besides the gender of the patient, the gender of the treating physician also affected treatment. The latter finding is quite surprising, at least to me.
It is probably no big surprise to anyone, that generally, men get more comprehensive treatment than females. This seems to be particularly true for diseases that have to do with the cardiovascular system.
In this new study, treatment of patients with heart failure was evaluated. There are guidelines in place in both the US and Europe that list specific medication categories for patients with certain sets of symptoms (i.e. different classifications). The study showed that males were much more likely to be given the medication, or medications, recommended in the guidelines. Women often got less medication than recommended in the guidelines.
The data shows that many women are undertreated, and their heart failure is not as well controlled as it is for men. It is estimated in that perhaps 1 in 10 of those over 65 years has heart failure. Statistics suggest that heart failure is one of the most common reasons for sudden hospitalization, and this costs the US 35 billion dollars a year. The medications used for treatment are not expensive, so besides moral considerations of undertreatment, a lot of money could be saved.
The surprising finding was that female physicians were much more likely than male physicians to give patients the medications suggested by the guidelines. Male physicians tended to have more patients who were under medicated. If I want to be snarky, this could be due to the arrogance that seems to be associated with male cardiologists. As a group they tend to have big egos and know everything. Perhaps the (few) women in the profession are more thoughtful and not so ego driven.
This study suggests two things. The first is that if you, or somebody you know, has heart failure make sure you get the correct medication(s). Ask your physician for your classification (often New York Association Functional Classification) and ask to be treated according to the guidelines for that classification.
Second, maybe when you need a cardiologist, you should think about going to a female cardiologist?
[tags]female cardiologist, gender, man, woman, male, female, heart failure, undertreatment, physician[/tags]
