PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Female heart disease patients with female physicians fare better

Emerging data suggests that physician gender may impact patient outcomes

2021-02-22
(Press-News.org) Female physicians have better patient outcomes compared with their male peers, while female patients are less likely to receive guideline-recommended care when treated by a male physician, according to a systematic review from the American College of Cardiology's Cardiovascular Disease in Women section published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

While women make up over 50% of internal medicine residents, only 12.6% of cardiologists are female. A dedicated effort to increase diversity in the cardiovascular field could help to lower implicit bias, often considered an important factor in health care disparities.

In a detailed systematic review, researchers looked at 13 studies examining the patient-physician gender relationship across multiple specialties and its role in the care patients receive. Of these, eight studies examined patient outcomes based on physician gender. The researchers found data supporting the suggestion that a patient's outcomes may be positively influence if they are treated by a physician of the same gender.

In one study, investigators found that female diabetes patients were less likely to receive intense treatment than male patients, particularly when treated by a male primary care provider. In another study, mortality rates for heart attack patients were highest among female patients treated by male physicians. If the treating physician was female, mortality rates remained the same between male and female patients. The study concluded that male physicians who had more exposure to female patients and physicians had more success in treating female patients.

While care disparities can be attributed to multiple factors, the study authors found they may relate, in part, to the differences in how heart disease presents in women vs. men, the underrepresentation of female subjects in clinical trials and the lack of women's health training in U.S. medical education.

"We must continue encouraging young physicians from diverse backgrounds to enter the field of cardiology in order for our physician workforce to more accurately reflect the gender composition of our overall patient population," said Malissa J. Wood, MD, co-director of the Corrigan Women's Heart Health Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Incoming Chair-elect of the ACC Board of Governors and the senior author of the study. "It is imperative that we ensure that all physicians provide the same level of high-quality care for all patients, regardless of gender. We need to incorporate comprehensive patient-centered communication and care into medical education."

To combat these findings, the study authors proposed three major recommendations:

1. Increasing Gender Diversity in the Physician Workforce Create interventions designed to address existing implicit and explicit biases which have limited opportunities for women in cardiovascular medicine. Change the culture of cardiology to be more female- and family-friendly. Increase representation of women in leadership positions in cardiovascular medicine.

2. Improving Gender- and Sex-Specific Medical Training Focus curricula on the presentation, diagnosis and treatment of women and men, and highlight specific differences. Include comprehensive behavioral health curriculum to address stress, depression and anxiety faced by women, as well as men, with heart disease. Teach patient-centered communication styles. Introduce implicit bias training.

3. Increase Research on the Role of Gender in Patient-Physician Relationships Focus on non-randomized experimental designs that incorporate economic approaches with medical research.

"A better understanding of the mechanisms driving gender differences in patient outcomes, including whether patient-physician gender concordance truly impacts patient outcomes, can help guide targets for interventions. More research is needed to understand the physician behaviors associated with improved patient outcomes, specifically in driving differential outcomes in gender patient-physician pairings, including drivers of implicit and explicit bias," Wood said.

INFORMATION:

Visit the CardioSmart Women and Heart Disease Hub, for more information on women and heart disease, including a new "Women and Heart Disease" infographic. CardioSmart is the patient education program brought together by the American College of Cardiology.

The American College of Cardiology is committed to improving diversity and inclusion within the cardiovascular workforce and the ACC's leadership and membership, and recognizes the success of its mission is dependent on including people who provide a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, ideas and perspectives. Learn more at END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Brain organoids grown in lab mature much like infant brains

Brain organoids grown in lab mature much like infant brains
2021-02-22
A new study from UCLA and Stanford University researchers finds that three-dimensional human stem cell-derived organoids can mature in a manner that is strikingly similar to human brain development. For the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience February 22, senior authors Dr. Daniel Geschwind of UCLA and Dr. Sergiu Pasca of Stanford University conducted extensive genetic analysis of organoids that had been grown for up to 20 months in a lab dish. They found that these 3D organoids follow an internal clock that guides their maturation in sync with the timeline of human development. "This is novel -- Until now, nobody has grown and characterized these organoids for this amount ...

For breakthroughs in slowing aging, scientists must look beyond biology

For breakthroughs in slowing aging, scientists must look beyond biology
2021-02-22
A trio of recent studies highlight the need to incorporate behavioral and social science alongside the study of biological mechanisms in order to slow aging. The three papers, published in concert in Ageing Research Reviews, emphasized how behavioral and social factors are intrinsic to aging. This means they are causal drivers of biological aging. In fact, the influence of behavioral and social factors on how fast people age are large and meaningful. However, geroscience--the study of how to slow biological aging to extend healthspan and longevity--has traditionally not incorporated ...

Traditional hydrologic models may misidentify snow as rain, new citizen science data shows

Traditional hydrologic models may misidentify snow as rain, new citizen science data shows
2021-02-22
Reno, Nev. (Feb. 22, 2021)- Normally, we think of the freezing point of water as 32°F - but in the world of weather forecasting and hydrologic prediction, that isn't always the case. In the Lake Tahoe region of the Sierra Nevada, the shift from snow to rain during winter storms may actually occur at temperatures closer to 39.5°F, according to new research from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Lynker Technologies, and citizen scientists from the Tahoe Rain or Snow project The new paper, which published this month in Frontiers in Earth Science, used data collected by 200 volunteer weather spotters to identify the temperature cutoff between rain and snow in winter storms that occurred during the ...

West Virginia's enduring, intertwined epidemics: Opioids and HIV

West Virginias enduring, intertwined epidemics: Opioids and HIV
2021-02-22
Long before COVID-19 entered the picture, West Virginia had been battling two other major public health crises: opioids and HIV. Dr. Sally Hodder, a leading infectious disease expert at West Virginia University, believes that despite the threat of COVID-19, the opioid and HIV epidemics should not be ignored. The two have become so intertwined in the Mountain State, that they must be treated together, she said. "We cannot try to solve the opioid epidemic or our emerging HIV epidemic by combating them separately," said Hodder, who serves as director of the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute and associate vice president ...

Distorting memories helps the brain remember

Distorting memories helps the brain remember
2021-02-22
In order to remember similar events, the brain exaggerates the difference between them. This results in divergent brain activity patterns but better memory performance, according to new research published in JNeurosci. Memory is subjective. Different people recall the same event in unique ways, and people exaggerate the difference between similar events in their own life. Yet this type of bias can be advantageous when it helps the brain distinguish between similar things and prevent confusion. In a study by Zhao et al., participants memorized different sets of faces paired with colored objects. Some ...

Oncotarget: MEK inhibitors relevant to SARS-CoV-2 infection

Oncotarget: MEK inhibitors relevant to SARS-CoV-2 infection
2021-02-22
The cover for issue 46 of Oncotarget features Figure 6, "Establishment of a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus that expresses SPIKE protein variants on the envelope of a lentiviral core, infection of human airway epithelial cells or lung cancer cells, and demonstration of MEKi attenuation of infectivity on primary human cells," published in "MEK inhibitors reduce cellular expression of ACE2, pERK, pRb while stimulating NK-mediated cytotoxicity and attenuating inflammatory cytokines relevant to SARS-CoV-2 infection" by Zhou, et al. which reported that Natural Killer cells and innate-immune TRAIL ...

A dynamic forest floor

2021-02-22
Walk along the beach after a winter storm and you'll see a shore littered with wracks of giant kelp, some 30 to 40 feet long -- evidence of the storm's impact on coastal kelp forests. Less apparent to the casual beachgoer is what happens to the submarine forests after the storm's fury dies down. This is precisely the topic of a new study led by Raine Detmer(link is external), a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara. She developed a mathematical model describing the effects of severe storms on kelp forest ecosystems, particularly the seafloor, or benthic, communities. The research, published in Ecology (link is external), reveals an ecosystem whose variability is key to its diversity. Giant kelp ...

Researchers develop speedier network analysis for a range of computer hardware

2021-02-22
Graphs -- data structures that show the relationship among objects -- are highly versatile. It's easy to imagine a graph depicting a social media network's web of connections. But graphs are also used in programs as diverse as content recommendation (what to watch next on Netflix?) and navigation (what's the quickest route to the beach?). As Ajay Brahmakshatriya summarizes: "graphs are basically everywhere." Brahmakshatriya has developed software to more efficiently run graph applications on a wider range of computer hardware. The software extends GraphIt, a state-of-the-art graph programming language, to ...

Yale neurologists identify consistent neuroinflammatory response in ICH patients

2021-02-22
Understanding how the immune system responds to acute brain hemorrhage could open doors to identifying treatments for this devastating disease. However, up until now, there has been limited information on inflammation in the brain from human patients, especially during the first days after a hemorrhagic stroke. This led a team of researchers to partner with a large clinical trial of minimally-invasive surgery to tackle defining the human neuroinflammatory response in living patients. "Our goal was to find out, for the first time, how certain key cells of the immune system are activated when they enter the brain after a hemorrhage and how this may shift over the first week. This ...

NASA's Swift helps tie neutrino to star-shredding black hole

NASAs Swift helps tie neutrino to star-shredding black hole
2021-02-22
For only the second time, astronomers have linked an elusive particle called a high-energy neutrino to an object outside our galaxy. Using ground- and space-based facilities, including NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, they traced the neutrino to a black hole tearing apart a star, a rare cataclysmic occurrence called a tidal disruption event. "Astrophysicists have long theorized that tidal disruptions could produce high-energy neutrinos, but this is the first time we've actually been able to connect them with observational evidence," said Robert Stein, a doctoral student at the German Electron-Synchrotron (DESY) research center in ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Impact of synbiotic supplements on the gut microbiome and overall health of penguins

Promising advances in organosilica membranes for separating organic liquid mixtures

Cell phone video technology unveils new method for analyzing walking and gait

Ancient isolation’s impact on modern ecology

Synaptic protein change during development offers clues on evolution and disease

How commercial rooftop solar power could bring affordable clean energy to low-income homes

Taking a closer look at pulmonary fibrosis genetics

Cats with MDR1 mutation at risk of severe reactions to popular medication

IOP Publishing and IPEM mandate reporting of sex and gender in research 

Dogs trained to detect trauma stress by smelling humans’ breath

Electronic device thermal management made simpler and slightly better!

Study: Dangerous surgical site infections can be reduced with simple prevention protocol

Genetic testing of patients with atrial fibrillation can alert clinicians to potential development of life-threatening conditions

Artificial Intelligence tool successfully predicts fatal heart rhythm

What progress has China made in agriculture green development over the past five years?

ALMA finds new molecular signposts in starburst galaxy

Open waste burning linked to air pollution in Northwestern Greenland

Google Street View reveals how built environment correlates with risk of cardiovascular disease

Connecting the dots to shape growth forces

Parental avoidance of toxic exposures could help prevent autism, ADHD in children, new study shows

Trends in the incidence of renal replacement therapy due to rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis in Japan, 2006–2021

Olympics not likely to swallow up skateboarding’s subversive nature into its corporate spectacle, study says

Looking after the NHS workforce must be a top priority, say experts

Prolonged use of certain hormone drugs linked to increased brain tumor risk

Delirium a ‘strong risk factor’ for dementia among older people

People experiencing homelessness more likely to develop dementia at younger ages, study finds

Can metalens be commercialized at a fraction of the cost?

Reclaim ‘wellness’ from the rich and famous, and restore its political radicalism, new book argues

Curtin research unlocks supernova stardust secrets

New documents reveal patient safety concerns over strike day cover

[Press-News.org] Female heart disease patients with female physicians fare better
Emerging data suggests that physician gender may impact patient outcomes