Heart procedures, such as pacemaker implantation, cardiac stenting, and valve replacement, are among the most common procedures performed in hospitals, and their numbers are growing every year, says Baral speak. However, data is scarce on gender and race-based differences in outcomes for the most common procedures, he said. Previous studies were limited to looking at differences in outcomes by race and sex for a single procedure, such as cardiac stenting. Baral and his colleagues decided that examining the outcome data for the seven most common procedures would better capture any disparities based on gender or race.
Baral and his colleagues analyzed data from hospitals across the United States between 2016 and 2019. The data were obtained from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS), a publicly available database. large database containing anonymized data from more than 7 million annual hospital admissions nationwide. The type of procedure each patient received was identified by the billing code in the International Classification of Diseases, tenth edition.
More than 2 million hospitalizations for cardiac procedures occurred during the three-year period that the researchers examined; 62% of all procedures are performed in men and 38% in women. Compared with men, women receiving cardiac procedures were about three years older (mean age 71.5 years for women versus 67.7 years for men) and scored slightly higher in an indicator of disease severity. After controlling for factors including age, sex, race, severity of illness, hospital location, and income, the researchers found that women were at increased risk of dying from the disease. hospital after cardiac procedure is 13% higher than in men. Regardless of gender, the vast majority of patients undergoing cardiac procedures were Caucasian (77%), compared with Black (9.6%), Hispanic (7.4%), Asian (2. 4%) and other (3.4%).
This study leaves many unanswered questions about why women have fewer heart procedures and are more likely to die in the hospital than men, Baral said. He said the symptoms of heart disease are often atypical in women, which may be why they have to have the procedure later. For example, women are less likely than men to experience chest pain as the most noticeable symptom of a heart attack. Women were more likely to report pain elsewhere on the body, such as in the jaw, back, abdomen, or arms, as well as symptoms such as shortness of breath, nausea, or heartburn. Additionally, unconscious biases or the assumption that women are less at risk of heart disease than men can prevent them from being offered these procedures in a timely manner, Baral said.
“Our findings should serve as a call to action to make doctors more aware that heart disease can present differently in women and to be more alert when women have atypical symptoms,” he said. could be a heart attack. “To improve overall outcomes in women, we should also work together to ensure that they receive the right cardiovascular procedures on time and are treated with the highest standard of care.”
More research is needed to determine whether people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds also have high mortality rates after undergoing cardiac procedures, Baral added.
Source: Eurekalert
