Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female (scientificamerican.com) 275
Women who suffer from heart attacks may be at a higher risk of death in the emergency room if they see a male physician rather than a female one, a new study suggests. The study doesn't jump to conclusions, but doctors and cardiologists have a few theories. There could be a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients' complaints as readily as [those of] a man, or there could be a bias that favors men in the medical literature, leading to misdiagnoses in women. It may also be that female doctors do a better job than their male counterparts. "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician, and a study published last year [...] indicated all patients of female physicians had lower mortality and hospital readmission rates," reports Scientific American. From the report: Heart disease is the number-one killer of both men and women, but the latter are significantly less likely to survive heart attacks. According to 2016 American Heart Association statement, 26 percent of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with just 19 percent of men. The gap widens with time: By five years after a heart attack almost half of women die, compared with 36 percent of men. The reason has eluded researchers for years, but the authors of the new study point to the disparity in male and female representation in emergency doctors as a potential source of answers. The researchers analyzed a Florida Agency for Health Care Administration database containing every heart attack case from every ER in the state (excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals) between 1991 and 2010.
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. "All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study and a data scientist at the University of Minnesota. If a heart attack patient is a woman and her emergency physician is a man, he says, her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors. This means approximately one out of every 66 women with heart attacks dies in the emergency room if she sees a male doctor rather than a female one.
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. "All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study and a data scientist at the University of Minnesota. If a heart attack patient is a woman and her emergency physician is a man, he says, her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors. This means approximately one out of every 66 women with heart attacks dies in the emergency room if she sees a male doctor rather than a female one.
Coud be that women lie more to male doctors (Score:4, Interesting)
Same way men will lie about their problems so as not to appear lesser. Nothing says women don't have pride.
Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's the cause. The study also shows that male doctors with more experience with female patients have a better outcome than male doctors with less experience with female patients.
There are things women and men might lie about or unconsciously "adjust" in different ways. If you had a non-obese patient, the male might claim he weighs a little more than he does, and a woman might claim she weighs a little less than she does. But in a hospital setting, I'm sure they do actual measurements instead of relying on the patient.
But you may have touched upon a potential factor here: communication. It may be, for example, that female patients are less good at volunteering the important information, and that female doctors and male doctors with experience treating females have less problems communicating in a way where the female patient tells important things. Which may include things that a female patient may be uncomfortable disclosing to a young male, like also having an UTI, yeast infection, irregular periods or copper implant. And a younger male doctor may be more uncomfortable with and less good at getting this information, perhaps expecting "any other problems?" to cover that. A doctor that's experienced with either being a women or treating female patients may just be better at asking direct questions.
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I remember reading somewhere that some conditions - particularly heart attacks - present differently between men and women. We typically think of chest pain and burning around the upper-left chest and shoulder area with a heart attack. Symptoms in women [heart.org] are often that and more - they might experience jaw/back pain, nausea and shortness of breath. Things that could be confused with a common cold or flu pretty easily.
It's the docs job to know the symptoms and correlate, they can't help much if they don't know
Or they don't understand statistics (Score:3)
Actually it's much simpler than that.
Their claim that their groups seperate out other infractions is not even basically correct.
All it takes is two biases.
For example if women having attacks are more likely to die (which they are add women tend to have them later in life) and male doctors are more likely to be given more difficult cases (which they are, as they tend to be more senior due to a longer time in the system) then we would see exactly this distribution.
How on earth a statistical paper can be publi
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I would word it more to the fact that the dynamic between same gender doctors vs different gender doctors may be an issue.
The difference may more be in the interaction vs the differences between different genders.
A Male with a Male doctor will be more honest with pain levels and explaining the issues. vs with a Male Patient with a Female doctor who may instinctive want to appear tougher then he really feels.
Normally when a man goes into a hospital they actually get extra attention because they will often go
Doctor's motivations (Score:2)
I'd be more inclined to look at the different motivations for male and female doctors.
Men are motivated to become doctors because it is a highly prestigious profession, they are also more likely to choose to become specialist in something like surgery.
Female doctors are much more likely to be motivated by compassionate and empathic reasons, the also more like to become general practitioners.
This is going lead to different levels of experience and skill in communication and diagnostics.
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They already did, some time ago.
Google "BBC health gap" and prepare to be horrified (it's a series of articles written by some dickless man calling himself a doctor) . Somehow even though women live 8 yrs longer, are healthier, die less at work (93:7), die less from suicide (3:1) there is a health gap, a systematic war against women of which the whole medical profession (where women are the majority) is complicit.
The best I have ever heard is that women are smaller and weaker than men because we systematica
too many confounding effects (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like to see better statistics. On average, a first heart attack strikes men at age 65; women, 72. A 72 year old is simply more likely to die of a heart attack than a 65 year old one; age matters. There's no surprise that women are more likely to die, and although women are more likely to die of their heart attack, men still, on the average, die earlier of heart attacks.
The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred. So I agree with the caution suggested by an outside researcher about this study: "Emergency doctors and cardiologists, however, are wary of jumping to conclusions just yet. It is a little early to say male physicians have trouble treating female heart attack patients based on these data alone, says Michelle O’Donoghue, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who did not work on the new study." Right: let's look at confounding effects first.
The big confounding effect here is age in doctors, not just patients: on the average, female doctors are younger than male doctors, and thus more recently educated and presumably up to date on the most modern techniques. I'd like to see that effect accounted for.
They already did, some time ago. Google "BBC health gap" and prepare to be horrified (it's a series of articles written by some dickless man calling himself a doctor) . Somehow even though women live 8 yrs longer, are healthier, die less at work (93:7), die less from suicide (3:1) there is a health gap, a systematic war against women of which the whole medical profession (where women are the majority) is complicit....
Yes, an interesting point. Men die earlier. How is this effect accounted for?
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I'd like to see better statistics. On average, a first heart attack strikes men at age 65; women, 72. A 72 year old is simply more likely to die of a heart attack than a 65 year old one; age matters. There's no surprise that women are more likely to die, and although women are more likely to die of their heart attack, men still, on the average, die earlier of heart attacks.
Except that, given female doctors for both male and female patients, women are not more likely to die. FTA:
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. “All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor–female patient..."
If your theory was correct, then you'd see a difference between female doctors treating men and female doctors treating women with women being more likely to die in both cases. But that's not true.
The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred.
Yes, but with a study population of over half a million, that's a statistically significant difference.
The big confounding effect here is age in doctors, not just patients: on the average, female doctors are younger than male doctors, and thus more recently educated and presumably up to date on the most modern techniques. I'd like to see that effect accounted for.
That would be a really great point, except it runs into the same flaw as your first argument: there was n
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Except that, given female doctors for both male and female patients, women are not more likely to die. FTA:
Maybe it is male doctors feel less comfortable with female patients or female patients feel less comfortable with male doctors. I don't know that is pure conjecture, but you can't just jump to conclusion from one study. I don't think the article did, lets just hope the media don't either.
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Excellent points. Possibly enough to totally explain part of the result. Perhaps all of it.
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The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred.
The summary said that female patients had a higher mortality from heart attacks when treated in the ER by male doctors. Statistically female doctors had similar outcomes for heart attack patients as male doctors with the exception that male doctors who didn't have much experience with female patients had worse outcomes in treating female heart attack patients.
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Guess which society was that? Athens. The city state, that is. Yes, the fathers of democracy.
You mean supposedly democratic oligarchy. You had to be a racially-privileged male landowner to have a vote. They had an upper social class that was in charge of everything. Sound familiar?
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"...no way you can be conservative with extrovert and openness score in the 95 percentile range)"
That you would provide such a gut wrenching and honest reveal of your complete lack of understanding is admirable. Most people cover up their flaws, inconsistencies, and ignorance with savage defensiveness. I applaud you for unashamedly showing everyone your personal prejudice and self-reinforcing ignorance without trying to defend it.
If only more people would do this, just admit they are an unreliable narrato
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You'll fail. There are things we tend to group with loose general and incorrect perceptions of the definition of a race that are real, things like national or regional origin and culture; as well as common highly visible traits like skin color, eye shape, dna ancestry, etc. None of these define a race and at this point the genetics and nationalities are so blended in o
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"You could argue that those who are very rich (those at the very, very top) are typically Jews. And that's not entirely false."
Yes, its entirely false.
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200% Wrong.
It's Republicans of today who are fundamentally distorting the Bill of Rights with their kooky concepts like how their "religious liberty" means they can deny others access to prescription medicines, how they can compel people to participate in their feigned displays of "patriotism" and of course, how they can be the victim when they aren't allowed to oppress and deny the civil rights of others.
Sad to see their party corrupted by the malignant influence that used to control the Democrats.
SAD!!
Republicans don't deny access to healthcare; they just don't want to pay for others having a procedure they disagree with. I disagree with elective abortion, so I don't want my tax dollars to pay for you to have an elective abortion. I am against making abortion illegal because there are some situations I agree with abortion (such as a pregnancy which resulted from rape, or cases where either the mother's or fetus' life is in severe jeopardy). The Catholic Church is against contraceptives, so they don't wan
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Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors (Score:5, Interesting)
Often with women, the symptoms are very subtle, not the overt chest pressure and discomfort that men readily feel and will know is a problem.
I'm guessing that female doctors are likely more in tune with women and can sense what's going on a bit better than men can.....
That might be part of it.....
Easily fixed (Score:5, Funny)
Have all doctors identify as women and all patients identify as men.
Re:Easily fixed (Score:4, Funny)
I identify as a Desert Eagle.
Wanna trigger me? FEELING LUCKY, PUNK?
Females are different to males (Score:5, Insightful)
From the abstract: "We further find that male physicians with more exposure to female patients and female physicians have more success treating female patients."
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1800097115
Just seems like people with more experience in treating females are better at treating females.
Re: Females are different to males (Score:4, Insightful)
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ISTR that the symptoms of a heart attack have some differences between women and men, and in women, the symptoms can be so subtle they're misdiagnosed more often than in men.
"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" (Score:4, Insightful)
No? The TFS sure as hell does!
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The only conclusion that anyone is drawing anywhere here on this page right now is the following: I conclude that SCVonSteroids doesn't understand what the word "conclusion" means.
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It's possible. English is not my native language, but please do educate me.
A summary is this, no? -> "Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female"
A conclusion is what you determine based on your research, no? -> "Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female"
Is the summary not the clickbait sentence that gets us to the article page?
I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if I am, but fucking hell I'm pretty sure you're just being nit picky twits. My p
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In this context, "jump to conclusions" means "stating a cause". While some article writers and other doctors not involved in the study will gladly speculate on possible causes for the statistical difference, the study itself doesn't do so.
Could it possibly be age? (Score:4, Insightful)
(from the referenced paper in the article [ahajournals.org], page 918 left side):
Women are often older when they present with their first AMI, at an average age of 71.8 years compared with 65 years for men.
(with AMI meaning Acute Myocardial Infarction)
Now, could it be that the shorter long term survival rate has more to do with age than gender?
Also, there is a very interesting graph on the previous page depicting the AMI-related deaths for both sexes, with female deaths due to cardiovascular faults being in sharp decline since 2000. So either something happened around that time that made women less susceptible to dying from a heart attack, or something else took over as the big lady killer.
Re: Could it possibly be age? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The main issue seems to be that although there are effective treatments they are underprescribed for women.
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Then I guess we should examine why.
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Scroll down to the conclusions in the report, they tell you why.
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The main issue seems to be that although there are effective treatments they are underprescribed for women.
Why do you think this? Is there a citation?
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It's in the conclusion section of TFP.
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"Recommended perfusion therapies for AMI in women are similar to those in men, yet bleeding risks and other complications remain greater in women. Women are undertreated with guideline-based recommendations, leading to worse outcomes and increased rates of readmission, reinfarction, and deaths in the first year after MI. CR is underused and underprescribed for women, but novel approaches to increase participation by women are promising. To further compound undertreatment, women’s adherence to these evidence-based recommendations is sub- optimal."
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It's what the entire article is about.
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It could be age related, in that the age profiles of male/female doctors are different, and there is a larger ratio of male doctors in their declining years making more "old person" mistakes than the women.
But my pet theory is that women are better doctors.
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Also, there is a very interesting graph on the previous page depicting the AMI-related deaths for both sexes, with female deaths due to cardiovascular faults being in sharp decline since 2000. So either something happened around that time that made women less susceptible to dying from a heart attack, or something else took over as the big lady killer.
Here is the same graph (not divided by gender, though) [heart.org]. The trend increases and decreases, To some degree matching cigarette consumption [medium.com] over the same period. Of course medical care has improved also over that time. Male cigarette smokers dropped more sooner, and farther, than women. There were more male smokers, too, so they had farther to drop. Currently rates between the two are the same.
The link between cigarettes and heart disease doesn't explain everything but it does explain a lot.
The obvious solution is ... (Score:2)
for women to have fewer heart attacks, like they did when they stayed home, kept house and raised the kids.
So which is it? (Score:5, Informative)
First proposition:
In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician
Second proposition:
The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. " All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient ," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study
Since the second is apparently from an author, I'd tend to guess the first is "journalistic flair" (ahem) from someone carrying around a gender hammer. Unfortunately can't look at the study itself to confirm -- the link in TFS is actually to the AHA 2016 statement and the actual study is paywalled.
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Yeah, I was hoping to see the actual confidence ranges that gave rise to the study author's conclusion. Was there much overlap in the "statistically indistinguishable" cases, or barely any? How much separation was there between those cases and the one that was distinguished? Did they appropriately adjust their idea of statistical significance for testing however many hypotheses they considered, or did they go trawling for p-values?
Re:So which is it? (Score:5, Informative)
I can get to it since I have subscriptions to these journals:
If you want better P-values, the significance halves. The reporting was done on the raw data which shows a slight variation within the error bars. Even if the study is correct, it comes down that statistically speaking, 2 out of the 500,000 cases may have survived longer if they had a female doctor.
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Let's not forget that only 13% of cardiologist are female [cloudfront.net]. This may have a dramatic influence on the statistics.
This is about ER docs. You won't often find a cardiologist working in the ER. Almost never.
Bring on the robots? (Score:2, Funny)
But I guess we'll have to make sure that they're not learning from predominantly male diagnosticians.
Re:Bring on the robots? (Score:4, Informative)
The study concludes:
"Sex differences occur in the pathophysiology and clinical pre-sentation of MI and affect treatment delays. Recommended perfusion therapies for AMI in women are similar to those in men, yet bleeding risks and other complications remain greater in women. Women are undertreated with guideline-based recommendations, leading to worse outcomes and increased rates of readmission, reinfarction, and deaths in the first year after MI."
So it seems like some doctors are failing to diagnose the issue as quickly in women as they do in men, because of the different ways that the condition presents. Furthermore they undertreat women.
Also,
"To further compound undertreatment, womenâ(TM)s adherence to these evidence-based recommendations is sub-optimal. There is a need for continued public health messages and interventions to target racial and ethnic minority women"
So when they are treated women from certain backgrounds are somewhat less likely to stick to the treatments. I kind of wonder if cost is a factor there.
The difference in outcomes between male and female doctors treating women is statistically significant but small in comparison to these bigger issues.
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So which is it (Score:2)
The second seems more likely to me from my own perspective as I know that that symptoms of a heart attack present differently in males and females. But I expect medical profession
Making open questions and not that different (Score:4, Interesting)
For the paper what seem to have happen is two fold.
First they had an open question, wanted to see if patients had different outcomes from male and female doctors, this is a prime example on how to poke the data until something came out, you just look at every combination until something presents a statistical significant value, I bet that if they do this study again they will get different findings.
Second, the difference was not that big, 0,5% less on the outcome of both cases, mortality and readmission, (or about 4% in relative terms) when treated by a woman, when the biggest difference in outcome, according the numbers by SciAm, was the gender itself, 26% of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with 19% of men.
The researches say they adjusted for several factors, but I wonder if differences in choices of time or location of work between men and women may cause the difference, if it is actually real.
And by the way, the mean age of patients in the study is 80 years old, and almost 2/3 were women.
For the SciAm article, they seem to not report on the paper, but on part of the raw data in the paper, which is likely not adjusted for confounding factors and the report also seem very biased and sensationalist.
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This. The difference is very small. If you're in the ER for a heart attack, you should be seen by a doctor - male or female - immediately. Time is of the essence. The sensat
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But gender is just a social construct! (Score:5, Funny)
Just remove this meaningless social construct that is gender from the study and the problem goes away.
Mandatory XKCD (Score:2)
https://xkcd.com/882/ [xkcd.com]
I need to say this: despite the fact that misoginy is a real problem in our society, this is just a spurious correlation.
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lots of explanations (Score:3)
How about:
(1) male physicians are bigger risk takers and take on harder cases
(2) male physicians are taking a longer view picture and don't waste resources on patients that may not die in the emergency room but will die within a few days
(3) male physicians do, in fact, listen more to their patients, about 20% of whom have do not resuscitate orders, and more who may express a verbal preference against extraordinary measures or a life with severe mental disability
(4) there are differences in reporting between male and female physicians
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oh, and perhaps the most important one (related to 1):
(5) male and female physicians choose different work environments and see different patient populations
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How about them?
Do you have any evidence or are you just JAQing off?
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No, I don't have any evidence. My points are called "alternative hypotheses". Actual scientists understand that proposing alternative hypotheses is a key element of how science makes progress.
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Your question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of "lack of statistical[ly significant] difference". A lack of statistically significant difference doesn't mean "evidence of absence" it means "absence of evidence".
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There is nothing to account for. You cannot conclude anything from the absence of statistical significance. So we don't know which of these differences are real and which ones are not, hence it's pointless to speculate which of the alternative hypotheses I listed applies. Women treating men may have the same statistical differences as women treating women, but they didn't show up.
But let's say we actually knew all the differences for certain. Every possible pattern of differences could simply be explained i
Excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals? (Score:2)
I've known this for some time (Score:5, Interesting)
A partner of mine suffered from agoraphobia terribly, sometimes suffering anxiety and tachycardia with HR over 220 for extended periods. Counseling, medication, nothing seemed to be effective, and she was a highly-skilled RN, just adding to her frustration. It ruined our relationship long before it became so debilitating she was considering changing her career.
One attack landed her in the ER and in front of the new-in-town cardiologist fresh from residency in a well-known hospital. According to the ER nurse he took a two minute look at the EKG, ordered tests stat, another two minute read, and was on the phone back to his residency hospital, booking air evac, and sending her to his mentor.
She had a conduction defect. Not merely undetected for her entire life, but actually ruled out by more than one cardiologist previously, certain she was just having panic attacks. Yes, this caused a few uncomfortable discussions, and this fresh new cardiologist left the area and joined a big-city practice, for he had stumbled into a nice, quiet city that loved its doctors, and did not appreciate having them called out as having missed one diagnosis.
Why? Well, first, women were once considered 'hysterical' beings, prone to problems that were psychological and not physical. This is hard to overcome, even generations later. And much heart disease is, even today, considered a male problem, as if women all eat well, suffer less stress, and are not physically active.
How many have died needlessly?
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There have been studies sh
Amazing statistics (Score:2)
Well, that's a relief... it is amazing, what insights can be gained from statistics, once you remove the shackles and the blinds imposed by the political correctness.
Semantics (Score:2)
Surely women don't die more. May more often, though :-p
The assumption is (Score:2)
Did they check for an age confounder? (Score:2)
Since the average age of male physicians and surgeons is 49.1, and the average age of female physicians and surgeons is 42.7 and more recent doctors will be trained better on indentifying female heart attacks - it might be age rather than gender that is giving this result and gender just happens to correlate with age.
Have they considered the psych/neuro angle? (Score:2)
This is perfectly normal (Score:2)
I'm not sue about the Operating Room thing, but I do more than one person who has had a first heart attack, had the operation and (typically) have stints and arteries replaced. They all are i excellent health today; the oldest had his operation nearly 20 years ago and none have had a post-operative attack. So the ER surgeons are doing something right.
With women, Estrogen protects them from heart disease until menopause (typically early 40's to mid-50's) but from that point onward heart disease is just as li
or.... (Score:2)
Maybe male doctors avoid touching female patients, lest they're accused of molesting them.
Re: Alternative hypothesis (Score:2, Funny)
It could also be the female cardiologists are less experienced, less senior or less competent. Therefore they are only assigned the easier, more routine, lower-risk cases.
Does Tokyo Medical University approve of their admissions staff posting on Slashdot during working hours?
Re:Alternative hypothesis (Score:4, Insightful)
It could also be the female cardiologists are less experienced, less senior or less competent. Therefore they are only assigned the easier, more routine, lower-risk cases.
If this was the case, then the disparity would show up for both male and female patients. Yet according to TFA, the survival difference for male patients was not statistically significant.
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That's not what it says.
It says "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician"
Which means that men seeing female doctors survive better too. Sometimes you have to be careful with reports, because male doctors kill more women is true. but male doctors kill more of everyone is MORE true.
So - basically the study is implying that there is something about male doctos that increases mortality.
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It says "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician"
TFA says that, but the report it is based on does not. TFA is poorly written by someone that can't do math (e.g.: the difference between 11.9 and 12.4 is not "12%"). A journalist who can't calculate a percentage is unlikely to be able to judge statistical significance.
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We're talking about a 0.6% difference in mortality rates here on the raw data, well within the error bars. The study itself even shows that for smaller P-values (which basically means increasing statistical accuracy) the difference is about half that or less.
The reporting and abstract painstakingly try to increase the relevance of this study but it seems in ~1,000 cases over all 500,000 was the statistical likelihood of survival larger with a female doctor. This doesn't mean that these people would've guara
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That would ensure everyone who arrived would get to see an expert team.
Get to people in less time with skilled ambulance crews.
Have helicopter crews that can fly in all conditions, day and night to get the sick to a nations very best teaching hospital.
That would get more people to a quality hospital more quickly and the team ready would be the very best that nation could educate.
The next question would be the
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I'd bet most ERs only have one cardiologist available at any given time.
I bet a lot of the smaller ones have none present at times and rely on on-call when needed.
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That's more like a 4% rise, not a 12% rise. Overstating threefold much?
To be fair, the mathematical blunders only occur in TFA, not in the original report [ahajournals.org].
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No it doesn't.
[...] a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors.
That's more like a 4% rise, not a 12% rise. Overstating threefold much?
A common mistake on /., conflating increase in risk with increase in occurrence probability.
Re:outrageous! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: outrageous! (Score:3)
It's odd that you don't see that it would still be the same study. Men survive more than women if the doctor is male, and women survive more than men if the doctor is female.
If you had bothered to read all the way too the 4th sentence of the summary, you would have seen this:
It may also be that female doctors do a better job than their male counterparts. "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician, and a study published last year [...] indicated all patients of female physicians had lower mortality and hospital readmission rates," reports Scientific American
But why actually read what you're commenting on, right? Total waste of time.
There's plenty for both party's fanatics to be butt-hurt about, I guess you just decided to pick one.
Judg
Re:Maybe doctors don't want to go to jail (Score:5, Informative)
CPR is not used for mycoardial infarction. The heart stopping, such as from atrial tachycardia, is treatable with CPU. CPR is quite dangerous, it tends to break ribs and is not that efficient. The mortality rate for CPR is also quite high: if you ever perform CPR in the field, it's important not to blame yourself personally if it fails, even if you made small mistakes. Only roughly 1/3 of CPR patients survive.
Myocardial Infarctions are tissue death in the heart, caused by a blockage. They're typically painful because muscle tissue in the heart is _dying_. Many people have survived numerous small infarctions. ECG's, however, electro cardiograms, where electrodes are placed on the chest and a few elsewhere on the body to monitor heart activity, does involve at least opening up the shirt and exposing the chest.
Also, many patients are quite frightened in the emergency room. I can easily picture a frightened, older female patient, who grew up more than 50 years ago, being less frightened and less reluctant to share their full medical information with a male physician, and their family or caregivers less able to communicate with a male physician.
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Some of these cases may be heart attacks, but I suspect most are actually just female hysteria.
Most chest pain in the ER turns out to be non-serious.
Still, it's to be careful as the serious cases are doozies.
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It is not the same thing. More men die from heart attacks, yes, but that number is not affected by the doctor's gender. It is only the female mortality figure from heart attack that is affected by the doctor's gender.
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Hey at least it wasn't an article about who Trump was trolling today.
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Someone else pointed out his behaviour a few months back and I haven't stopped noticing it.