Doctor gender may matter in spotting heart disease

LONDON, Sep 7 (Reuters) A doctor's gender could determine how early heart disease is detected in women, researchers said on Thursday.

A study of how physicians make decisions found women doctors focused less on age than their male counterparts, potentially overlooking an important risk factor for coronary heart disease.

''We found some differences according to the doctors' gender,'' Ann Adams, a researcher at the University of Warwick who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. ''One particular area we highlighted was that there were differences in how doctors were taking into account the patients' ages.'' Previous studies have shown women do not fully understand the high risk of coronary heart disease, the leading killer of both men and women in the industrialised world.

According to the World Health Organisation, some 3.8 million men and 3.4 million women die from it each year.

Other research has shown women do not get the same treatment for the disease as men. Adams said such findings highlight the need to further investigate evidence suggesting women sometimes get delayed treatment and die more quickly from heart disease.

She and her colleagues used data from a wider study on how doctors make decisions to look into the role gender plays in diagnosing heart disease.

In the study, a group of US and British doctors were shown videotapes of actors ranging in age from 55 to 75 displaying classic symptoms of coronary heart disease, Adams said.

When the researchers asked the doctors to discuss their diagnoses, they found 81 per cent noted age as a factor for the male ''patients'', but only 63 per cent did so for the women.

More surprising, Adams said, was that female doctors reported age as an issue in 91 per cent of diagnoses for male patients, but only 50 per cent for the women.

The team published their findings in the latest edition of The Sociology of Health and Illness.

It did not discover the reason for the findings, but Adams said one possible explanation was perhaps that female doctors focus more on how women patients told their story, which diverts attention away from diagnostic factors such as age.

''They spoke about it in relationship to male patients but less frequently in female patients,'' Adams said. ''Maybe they aren't taking as much notice about it as they should.'' Reuters ARB DB0920