Medicine for men: Why women are often left behind!

Medicine for men: Why women are often left behind!

Health care for women continues to have significant deficiencies, despite increasing attention to gender issues in medicine. A central problem is that many heart attacks in women go undetected. According to a report by vol.at Many women do not correctly recognize the symptoms of a heart attack. Signs such as fatigue, back pain, or jaw pain are often not associated with a heart attack, delaying treatment.

Clinical psychologist Christa Bauer from “Femail” emphasizes that medicine has used men as the standard for decades, which has led to the neglect of women in research. This one-size-fits-all approach can result in incorrect medication response or ineffectiveness of prostheses for women. In Austria, gender medicine is usually only an elective subject in studies, although the University of Innsbruck is an exception and offers this area as compulsory.

Cardiovascular diseases and their perception

A persistent myth persists that cardiovascular disease is a “men’s problem,” even though it affects women just as much. A study shows that on average it takes women over 65 more than four hours to get to the emergency room after the first symptoms of a heart attack, while men need about an hour less. In addition, heart attacks generally occur 8-10 years later in women than in men. These differences in perception and disease progression are alarming and urgently require more vigilant health strategies. Medical Journal reports the need to better educate women about cardiovascular diseases in order to counteract the higher death rate from heart attacks.

Women often experience different symptoms than men, such as nausea, shortness of breath and pain in the upper abdomen or in the shoulder and lower jaw areas. Social stereotypes also mean that women are less likely to receive painkillers in emergency rooms, even if they report equally severe pain. The dosage information in many medical guidelines is often based on research using men as test subjects, which can lead to overdoses in women.

The importance of gender medicine

Gender medicine has developed since the end of the 20th century and aims to research and address gender differences in health. The annual Vorarlberg Women's Health Day, organized by “Femail”, is intended to make women's health more visible and initiate discussions about topics such as menstruation and menopause. A DGK position paper highlights that gender-specific aspects in cardiology are often inadequately taken into account because women are underrepresented in many studies. The guidelines for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases urgently need to be adapted to address these deficits. DGK therefore calls for gender differences to be taken into account in order to enable personalized treatment for women.

Overall, the need for information is high. A lack of research on women-specific risk factors such as diabetes and gestational hypertension underscores the need to fundamentally reform women's medical care. Improving the quality of care by paying attention to gender-specific aspects in medicine is essential to overcome health inequalities.