Although heart disease has traditionally been thought of as a predominantly male illness, more women than men now die of heart disease every year. It is the second leading cause of death in women aged 45-54, and the third leading cause of death for women aged 35-44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, the American Heart Association reports that only 62% of women survive their first heart attack, compared to 75% of men. Despite these clear statistics, thousands of women in the U.S. with cardiac conditions are misdiagnosed and undertreated every year.

American women, especially younger women, are less likely than men to be tested appropriately in order to diagnose cardiac conditions. Even once the issue is discovered, women receive only 33% of all angioplasties, stents, and bypass surgeries; 28% of all implantable defibrillators; and 36% of all open-heart surgeries, according to the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. This difference in treatment may account for the fact that women are more likely to die within a year of a heart attack than men. Women are also more likely to be given sedatives to treat pain, while male patients with comparable symptoms are more likely to receive narcotics.

One reason for this discrepancy in treatment may be that women are more likely than men to experience “atypical” symptoms – classified as such solely because research subjects in heart disease studies were exclusively male for decades. Recent studies suggest that there are simply differences in the symptoms that men and women exhibit when having a heart attack – men are more likely to have chest pains, while women are more likely to experience nausea or less severe discomfort in the neck, back, or arms. According to one study published in an American Heart Association Journal last year, these types of symptoms are commonly experienced by women under 55, and nearly all of the women interviewed for that study indicated that they felt they had to convince their healthcare providers that their symptoms were serious.

This feeling of not being taken seriously is substantiated by a litany of studies from the past 20+ years showing that female patients complaining of pain are more likely to have their pain attributed to psychosocial or emotional factors and receive less aggressive treatment than men. Many of these studies are compiled in the well-known article entitled, “The Girl Who Cried Pain,” written by a University of Maryland law professor in 2001. Even more evidence of Professor Hoffman’s conclusion has emerged in the intervening years. For example, a 2014 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that women experienced delays in critical treatment in the immediate aftermath of a heart attack because their symptoms were misdiagnosed – as anxiety.

This persistent minimization of women’s pain and failure to recognize common symptoms of heart disease can lead to significant delays in diagnosis and treatment, or even complete misdiagnosis, of an illness that is now the number one cause of death for American women as a whole.

Sources:

[The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=383803)

[Heart Attack Symptoms Are Often Misdiagnosed As Anxiety In Women](http://www.businessinsider.com/heart-attack-symptoms-are-often-misdiagnosed-as-anxiety-in-women-2014-3)

[Younger Women Hesitate To Say They’re Having A Heart Attack](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/02/24/388787045/younger-women-hesitate-to-say-theyre-having-a-heart-attack)

[Why Doctors Still Misunderstand Heart Disease in Women](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/heart-disease-women/412495/)