According to a study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, women and black patients will lose more years of potential life after a heart attack compared to white men.
To conduct the study, researchers examined records from the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project—a cohort study that included all free-for-service Medicare recipients discharged with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) since the mid-1990s.
Researchers analyzed a total of 146,743 cases of heart attack patients—48.1% of the patients were women and 6.4% were black.
After a 17-year follow-up, results indicated that the survival rate for white men was the highest at 8.3% followed by white women at 6.4%. The survival rate for black men was 5.4%, while the survival rate for black women was 5.8%.
Researchers estimated that white women lost 10 years of life after a heart attack, nearly double the 5.1 years lost by white men.
Black men lost 0.3 more years of life compared to white men, while black women lost one year more of life than white women.
Researchers conclude that the results shed light on the inconsistency of treatment across the different groups.
According to the study’s senior author, Dr. Harlan Krumholz, “We found that women and black patients are losing more years of their life after a myocardial infarction with one of the reasons potentially being they are not receiving care on par with men and white patients. The study makes clear the disadvantage of these groups and suggests that higher quality of care for everyone might be a helpful remedy.”
Sources for Today’s Article:
Bucholz, E.M., et al., “Life expectancy and years of potential life lost after acute myocardial Infarction by sex and race,” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2015.06.022, http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2422315.
Lam, P. “Women, black patients have poorer life expectancy after heart attack,” Medical News Today web site, August 5, 2015; http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/297710.php.