by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Last week, I was re-reading a 2018 study that examined female survival rates following a heart attack diagnosis (a topic of great interest to me and other women whose cardiac symptoms have ever been misdiagnosed). Study authors explained what we already knew (“a large body of evidence suggests that women are less likely than men to survive traumatic health episodes like acute myocardial infarction).” There are lots of studies out there suggesting the same conclusion, but this research tracked both the outcomes of cardiac treatments and also whether the treating physician was male or female. Their conclusions raised an astonished eyebrow or two at the time (notably, in male physicians!) because researchers found that female heart patients who had been treated by female physicians had better survival outcomes than women treated by male docs. (There were some specific exceptions reported – if, for example, a male physician has had considerable experience working alongside female colleagues).
I’m guessing that many male physicians don’t like to entertain those kinds of study findings. . Continue reading “When female doctors treat female patients”
I was late in discovering the writing of Ed Yong. The British-American journalist had already been a staff writer at The Atlantic for six years before I first read one of his articles, but it was his rare ability to make the most complex science make sense which convinced me to start reading everything he wrote. Here’s how Ed’s own editors 
Helen A. (pictured here) is a longtime 
Heart Sisters 