Revised heart attack definitions which affect women

Studies have often focused on men, especially because they don't have the hormonal changes that can influence results (which you'd think would be worth extra study in itself!).

When I read the symptoms in women I always think I'd never know I was having a heart attack. I often have those kinds of symptoms and always have.

I did once go to emergency with chest pain. They put it down to indigestion (it wasn't) and I later learned that another condition I have can cause chest pain, strangely. So it makes sense now.

It's not great is it?
I have often observed from when I was working in the health service that women's problems are more likely to be diagnosed (?dismissed) as having a psychological cause than with men. It is difficult to know how true this is.

Most medical training is based upon men, not women, therefore women are at a disadvantage. Women can also be treated differently to men when presenting at the GP and at A&E, their complaints are more often dismissed, with medical practitioners citing periods/periomenopause/or post menopause causing or exacerbating symptoms. This was the findings of Sussex University in a very interesting lecture about medical ethics I attended once, and from my own experience I can relate to this.

I have just AI'd it and it seems that there have had to be lots of changes in diagnostic practice in lots of tests and conditions as they were failing to recognise sex differences. These have included anaemia, kidney function, osteoporosis... a long list.

The prime example is heart disease which has long been based on the classic "man clutches chest and falls over" model. It is good that things are changing, but very strange that people ever thought that diagnostic criteria should not look at possible sex differences.

I think there are quite a few - I knew about the heart attack difference, but there are other conditions which present very differently in women than men. This is exactly why it is so important, especially in a medical sense, that people are treated based on their biological sex, and not what gender they choose to identify as.