‘Shocking state of affairs’: UK women dying unnecessarily from heart attacks
Women are dying unnecessarily from heart disease due to entrenched gender biases in healthcare, researchers have found.
Heart disease is the UK’s leading cause of death in women, killing one in 14 women.
Yet a group of health researchers said many of those deaths could be prevented if women’s symptoms were not "ignored".
“(Women are) told there is nothing wrong with them, or treated for something else, when all along they might be suffering from a heart problem,” lead author Professor Vijay Kunadian wrote in the journal, Heart.
“People assume it is a men’s disease – when a man complains he is more likely to get the attention from the ambulance or the doctors.
“We can’t ignore that anymore, it is about time that we do something about it”.
In the UK, 3.6 million women have ischemic heart disease.
More than 30 UK heart experts have written a joint statement, saying women were repeatedly being underdiagnosed and undertreated for heart disease and unrepresented in clinical research.
Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, said it was a ‘shocking state of affairs’.
She called for urgent NHS action.
“Heart disease kills more women than breast cancer every year,” she said.
“Yet robust evidence from across the globe shows the odds are stacked against you if you are a woman, part due to entrenched biases in society including health and care.”
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A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said women’s health had been ‘neglected’ within the NHS, vowing to prioritise it.
It said up to 130,000 extra health checks would be held at workplaces around the nation in a bid to detect cardiovascular disease and other conditions earlier.
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