News

Women who are hospitalized after a heart attack or stroke are significantly more likely than men to die while being treated, according to new Canadian data.

The research by the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that, over all, one in nine heart-attack sufferers and one in five felled by stroke die within 30 days of being admitted to hospital.

But a further analysis demonstrates that women are 16 per cent more likely to die after a heart attack and 11 per cent more likely to die after a stroke than their male counterparts.

"The disparities may be due to the care received -- it may be different for men and women," said Jennifer Zelmer, vice-president of research and analysis at CIHI.

She stressed that this is speculative, though there are some important hints that gender plays a role in the quantity and quality of care received.

For example, men are more likely to be hospitalized than women after a heart attack or stroke. Men are also more likely to be cared for by a specialist -- a cardiologist or a neurologist -- than women. And women are less likely to get rehabilitation care.

Ms. Brown said a concerted effort has been made to educate physicians that heart disease and stroke are not male diseases. Work still needs to be done to convince women to take symptoms seriously.

"A lot of women still don't appreciate that they're having a heart attack or a stroke so treatment is delayed," Ms. Brown said in an interview.

The new CIHI data, released yesterday in Toronto, show that while cardiovascular disease is still Canada's No. 1 killer, mortality and hospitalizations for heart attack and stroke have both been falling for a number of years, largely because of better treatment and prevention, notably a drop in smoking rates.