Reports From the Field: Young women at greater risk after bypass surgery
April 1, 2002 less than 1 minute read
Reports From the Field: Young women at greater risk after bypass surgery
Women are at as much as a three times greater risk than men of dying during or shortly after coronary artery bypass surgery, researchers report.
The report, in the Feb. 19, 2002, issue of Circulation: the Journal of the American Heart Association, concludes that women younger than 50 face an even greater risk than men.
"Although the percentage of bypass surgery patients who died was relatively small, the differences in both overall mortality and the death rate for patients under age 60 was significant between the two sexes," says Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, associate professor at Emory University’s School of Medicine in Atlanta and co-author of the study.
The researchers were unable to determine why the death rates were different between men and women, Vaccarino says. The researchers reviewed the records of 51,186 patients in the National Cardiovascular Network database who underwent bypass surgery at 23 medical centers. Of the patients, 29.7% were women.
Overall, 5.3% of the women died in the hospital compared with 2.9% of the men. In addition, 3.4% of women younger than 50 died compared with 1.1% of the men. In the 50-59 age group, 2.6% of women and 1.1% of men died.
"Women tended to have more pre-existing illness and risk factors in their medical history but they had less extensive coronary atherosclerosis and their hearts had better pump functions as detected by cardiac catheterization. It seems paradoxical, but that’s what the data show," Vaccarino says.
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