Revised heart attack definitions which affect women

I think there are quite a few - I knew about the heart attack difference, but there are other conditions which present very differently in women than men. This is exactly why it is so important, especially in a medical sense, that people are treated based on their biological sex, and not what gender they choose to identify as.

I have just AI'd it and it seems that there have had to be lots of changes in diagnostic practice in lots of tests and conditions as they were failing to recognise sex differences. These have included anaemia, kidney function, osteoporosis... a long list.

The prime example is heart disease which has long been based on the classic "man clutches chest and falls over" model. It is good that things are changing, but very strange that people ever thought that diagnostic criteria should not look at possible sex differences.

Most medical training is based upon men, not women, therefore women are at a disadvantage. Women can also be treated differently to men when presenting at the GP and at A&E, their complaints are more often dismissed, with medical practitioners citing periods/periomenopause/or post menopause causing or exacerbating symptoms. This was the findings of Sussex University in a very interesting lecture about medical ethics I attended once, and from my own experience I can relate to this.

It's not great is it?
I have often observed from when I was working in the health service that women's problems are more likely to be diagnosed (?dismissed) as having a psychological cause than with men. It is difficult to know how true this is.

Studies have often focused on men, especially because they don't have the hormonal changes that can influence results (which you'd think would be worth extra study in itself!).

When I read the symptoms in women I always think I'd never know I was having a heart attack. I often have those kinds of symptoms and always have.

I did once go to emergency with chest pain. They put it down to indigestion (it wasn't) and I later learned that another condition I have can cause chest pain, strangely. So it makes sense now.

Luckygirl3

It's not great is it?
I have often observed from when I was working in the health service that women's problems are more likely to be diagnosed (?dismissed) as having a psychological cause than with men. It is difficult to know how true this is.

I think that is often very much the case. I know I have often had very real health concerns dismissed over the years - being put down to age, weight or just 'women's troubles', and from talking to friends, I'm by no means alone in that. Even when my husband and I were in a car accident, he was the one taken into A&E in a wheelchair, while I was the one with a broken collarbone!

I so pleased this has come about, it needs to be out there on banners.
I have worked in Cardiology all my career and it was know that symptoms where different but now wide spread information needs to be shouted out on social media, magazines, papers everywhere.

I have seen Women patients in the Cath Labs who could have been treated earlier if they were aware of what was going on with their body. It wasn't just "Women's" pains and shrugged it off but serious.

Also men are taken more seriously because of the ‘male reluctance’ story, where men supposedly never go to report health problems so must be ill if they then turn up. This is not by any means borne out by medical research, and as a woman I can safely say that women usually put their own health on hold because of being the main caregiver for the family, and will chivvy their men along to go and see about health probs.

Visgir1

I so pleased this has come about, it needs to be out there on banners.
I have worked in Cardiology all my career and it was know that symptoms where different but now wide spread information needs to be shouted out on social media, magazines, papers everywhere.

I have seen Women patients in the Cath Labs who could have been treated earlier if they were aware of what was going on with their body. It wasn't just "Women's" pains and shrugged it off but serious.

I made a complaint to the hospital which had failed to make the proper diagnosis. To be fair to them they recognised their failure and took it very seriously - they put in new training (using my case as an example) and instituted new protocols around cardiac assessment.

So - hats off to them. But it should not have been necessary!