Survival after heart attacks increases for women in treatment by female doctors

Treatment outcomes change when women treat female patients?

Researchers have now found that when women experience a heart attack, the likelihood of survival is higher when the women are treated by a female doctor in the hospital.

Washington University researchers in St. Louis found in their current research that women more often survive a heart attack when treated by female doctors. The physicians published the results of their study in the English-language journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS).

A typical sign of a heart attack is sudden onset of massive, lasting more than five minutes of pain behind the sternum and on the left side of the chest. The pain can radiate to the shoulders, arms, neck, back and upper abdomen. (Image: Kzenon / fotolia.com)

Over 580,000 heart attacks were closely analyzed

For their study, the American experts examined a total of nearly 582,000 cases of heart attacks over a period of almost 19 years. The researchers found that women who were admitted to an emergency room at a hospital had a significantly higher chance of survival if another woman was responsible for their treatment. Their chances of surviving a heart attack were also improved if they were treated by a male doctor who had many female colleagues in his team, the doctors explain.

Female sufferers survive heart attacks less frequently

Although in general very well-trained experts carried out the treatment, the gender of doctor and patient seems to play a major role, explains study author Dr. med. Seth Carnahan from Washington University in St Louis. Researchers culled anonymous patient data from Florida hospitals from 1991 to 2010 for their study, including factors such as age, ethnicity, and medical history. Even after accounting for these factors, they found that women suffer from heart attacks less frequently than male patients.

How a doctor affects the treatment results?

When patients were treated by male doctors, 12.6 percent of men died compared to 13.3 percent of women. This corresponds to a difference of 0.7 percent. However, gender differences have more than tripled to 0.2 percent when doctors did the treatment. In this case, 11.8 percent of men died compared to 12 percent of women.

Female doctors tend to get better treatment outcomes

The current findings confirm previous research that showed that female doctors tend to get better outcomes than doctors, Dr. Carnahan. The team clearly noted that women's survival rates increased as the proportion of female doctors working in the emergency room increased. (As)