MI treatment

NEW YORK, July 6 (Praxis Press) Studies suggest that women with acute myocardial infarction receive less aggressive therapy than men. Using data from the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project, researchers looked at whether there is a gender gap in how men and women who were ideal candidates for therapy after acute myocardial infarction were treated. Information gleaned from the charts of 138 956 Medicare beneficiaries (49% of them women) who had an acute MI in 1994 or 1995 confirmed that women, especially elderly women, receive somewhat less aggressive treatment following MI. However, though they were less likely than men to have cardiac catheterization, other differences – use of thrombolytic therapy, aspirin, beta-blockers and ACE inhibitors – were slight, and had no apparent effect on 30–day mortality.