Young and middle-aged female adults tend to receive slower hospital care than males in the same age range when experiencing heart attacks and chest pains.
Research led by Dr Louise Pilote from Canada’s McGill University looked at 24 Canadian, one American and one Swiss hospital. Over 1,100 patients were involved in the study.
Males received electrocardiograms on average 15 minutes after entering the hospital while females had to wait 21 minutes.
The researchers believe that because patients in the emergency department with non-cardiac chest pain are more often women, this leads to a bias by emergency department staff to initially misdiagnose women who have chest pains or a heart attack as suffering from anxiety.
Read more at McGill University