Female Heart Risk Data

"[Being female is a] statistically significant risk factor for dying after surgery."
"These established sex differences explain our overall observation of lower estimated long-term survival in women after cardiac surgery and of female sex being an independent risk factor for long-term mortality."
"[The risk of dying after bypass surgery remains low; in the one percent rage.] But out of that one percent, we are seeing more women than men."
Dr. Louise Sun, cardiac anesthesiologist, clinical scientist, University of Ottawa Heart Institute

"Given the substantial sex differences in patient presentation for coronary and valvular heart disease, further efforts need to be directed at the education of both physicians and patients in the early recognition of acute presentation of cardiac disease in women."
Research Study authors 

Cardiogram monitor in surgery Fotolia

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association where over 72,000 Ontario cardiac patients were involved, found women likelier to die than their male counterparts following coronary artery bypass surgery or valve surgery, including both combined, within thirty days -- including in the longer term. Researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the University Health Network in Toronto, conducted the study which now becomes part of the evidence steadily mounting pointing out that heart disease and surgical outcomes are vastly different between men and women.

Of the 72,824 Ontario patients who had undergone cardiac bypass and valve surgeries in the years 2008 to 2016, the majority represented male patients, a reflection that heart disease afflicts a greater number of men than it does women. Of those studied, twenty-five percent were women. While women were seen to have significantly higher rates of death compared to men following coronary artery bypass surgery and combined bypass and mitral valve surgery, women had lower rates of long-term mortality after isolated mitral valve replacement.

Men, on the other hand, experienced lower death rates after isolated mitral valve repair, findings that led researchers to the conclusion that women are plagued with "long-term mortality" in the wake of cardiac surgery. Several plausible reasons were considered, explaining women's high death rates; one, that women tend to be more age-advanced than men when cardiac bypass surgery is required; they are more physically frail, and more medically complex, frequently associated with additional health issues like diabetes and hypertension.

Apart from those common gender-difference reasons, women frequently experience treatment delays where men do not tend to, leading to their conditions becoming more seriously impacted by the time surgery appears on the horizon. Among medical complexities in female patients, pointed out Dr Sun, is that some patients undergoing bypass and mitral valve surgery have had a previous undetected heart attack which might explain why they require surgery to replace a leaky mitral valve.

Additionally, sex-specific risk-prediction models for patients undergoing cardiac surgery is needed, for which a suitable protocol is currently being worked on.

Heart attack symptoms for women

The most common heart attack symptom in women is some type of pain, pressure or discomfort in the chest. But it is not always severe or even the most prominent symptom, particularly in women. And, sometimes, women may have a heart attack without chest pain. Women are more likely than men to have heart attack symptoms unrelated to chest pain, such as:

• Neck, jaw, shoulder, upper back or abdominal discomfort
• Shortness of breath
• Pain in one or both arms
• Nausea or vomiting
• Sweating
• Lightheadedness or dizziness
• Unusual fatigue

Mayo Clinic