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 Researchers analyzed data on more than 12,000 patients who survived
for at least a year after a heart attack between 2007 and 2009. They
found that women were just as likely as men to stick with prescribed
drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure once they started.
The trouble is that women were less likely than men to start taking
all of the drugs recommended for heart attack survivors.
While the study can’t determine the exact reason for the gender gap
– doctors might not have prescribed the drugs or women might not
have filled the prescriptions – the findings highlight the need to
offer women more aggressive treatment, said lead study author Kate
Smolina.
“It is important for both clinicians and patients to move away from
the traditional thinking that cardiovascular disease is a man’s
disease,” Smolina, a researcher at the University of British
Columbia, said by email.
The gender gap persisted for all age groups but was particularly
stark for younger patients, Smolina and colleagues report in the
American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular
Quality and Outcomes.
Among heart attack patients under 55, only 65 percent of women
initiated treatment with all appropriate drugs, compared to 75
percent of men that age, the study found.
For the oldest patients in the study, people over 85, drug
compliance was generally worse but the gender disparity wasn’t as
pronounced. At this age, 50 percent of men and 48 percent of women
initiated appropriate medication therapy.
Once they filled prescriptions, however, sticking to medications was
similar for men and women one year after they left the hospital, the
study found.
“Younger women should be treated just as aggressively as older women
or as men of the same age, especially when we have medications that
work,” Smolina said.
The prescriptions assessed were for medicines designed to help lower
cholesterol and blood pressure, which are both linked to a lower
risk of repeat heart attacks.
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Overall, more than two thirds of the heart attack survivors in the
study initiated treatment on all appropriate medications within two
months of leaving the hospital.
Over the next year, however, only one third of them filled these
prescriptions at least 80 percent of the time.
One limitation of the study is that it relied on prescription data
to assess how often patients took recommended medications, a measure
that can’t capture when or if doctors prescribed medicines or how
long patients might have waited to fill those prescriptions, the
researchers acknowledge.
Previous research has shown women, particularly younger women, are
less likely than men to receive recommended therapies after a heart
attack, noted Dr. Gregg Fonarow, co-director of preventive
cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University
of California, Los Angeles.
“This study confirms those prior findings but shows once started on
post (heart attack) medications, women were just as likely to
continue therapy through the first year,” Fonarow, who wasn’t
involved in the study, said by email. “This suggests the differences
in initial outpatient use reflects differences in therapies being
prescribed at discharge from the hospital.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/XaY6j7 Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and
Outcomes, online October 13, 2015
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