More Readmissions Seen in Younger Women Than Men After Acute MI

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 12, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Among younger adults, the hospital readmission rate after a heart attack is higher for women than for men, according to a study published online Oct. 4 in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Mina Madan, M.D., from the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, and colleagues assessed contemporary care pathways and clinical outcomes among younger women with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The analysis included 38,071 AMI patients (aged 18 to 55 years; 21.2 percent women) hospitalized from April 1, 2009, to March 31, 2019.

The researchers found that although most patients received coronary angiography (96 percent), coronary revascularization was less frequent among women than men (percutaneous coronary intervention: 61.9 versus 78.8 percent; surgery: 4.1 versus 6.0 percent). Compared with men, women had more normal coronary anatomy (5.8 versus 1.7 percent) and nonobstructive disease (22.8 versus 9.3 percent). The primary composite end point of one-year all-cause mortality or readmission for unstable angina, AMI, heart failure, or stroke was significantly increased among women (10.0 versus 7.9 percent; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.11). Women had higher all-cause readmission (25.8 versus 21.1 percent; adjusted hazard ratio, 1.34).

“This may reflect the higher risk profile we observed among younger women in our study compared with younger men or support the notion that younger women may benefit from earlier follow-up care and better support networks that could reduce the need for readmissions soon after discharge,” Madan said in a statement.

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