A new study reveals that white men are more likely to receive immediate emergency-room treatment for heart attacks than either minorities or middle-aged women.
In many cases, the latter groups are mistakenly sent home by doctors, according to the nationwide study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study also concludes that patients whose heart-attack diagnoses were missed had a much higher subsequent death rate than patients admitted with a diagnosis of a heart attack.
Those with a missed diagnosis were nearly twice as likely to die from their heart attack than hospitalized patients, the study of 11,000 heart patients said.
The study found that women younger than age 55 with heart attacks were nearly seven times more likely to be erroneously discharged.
It also concluded that non-white patients were four times as likely to be mistakenly discharged. Among just blacks, it jumps to five times.
The study found that slightly more than 2 percent of those who arrived at the emergency room with what was later confirmed to be a heart attack were mistakenly discharged as normal. That represents about 12,000 people nationwide each year.
Also, of those who had unstable chest pain requiring hospitalization, 14,000 were improperly sent home.
The findings dovetail with previous studies that have repeatedly shown that women and blacks get less aggressive care in the nation’s medical-care system.
For example, women and blacks admitted to hospitals with heart attacks tend to get less aggressive care, such as clot-dissolving drugs or surgical intervention, than do white males.
And women and blacks get fewer organ transplants than white men, or wait longer for them.
“Among emergency patients, it’s true heart attacks are less likely in younger women, African-Americans, those without chest pain and those with normal ECGs,” said Harry Selker, chief of clinical-care research at New England Medical Center.
“However, such patients will have heart attacks. Physicians must be careful not to overgeneralize about certain groups of patients, and they should learn to properly use the latest diagnostic techniques.”