Female patients tend to get worse care for heart failure than males, a new nationwide study has revealed.
Researchers from Imperial College London conducted a survey of nearly 9,500 hospital admissions and found that female patients are less likely to receive ultrasound scans and medication than men, and are also less likely to receive treatment once they have left hospital.
The university's Professor Martin Cowie told the BBC that women were getting 'a worse deal than their male counterparts'.
'There is a general perception, both among women themselves and the doctors that look after them, that women are less likely to have heart problems, and if they do they are less likely to be as serious as they are in a man,' he explained.
'Symptoms in a woman need to be taken just as seriously, and treated just as aggressively as they would be in a man.'
Nearly 2.6 million people have heart and circulatory disease in the UK, and nearly a quarter of premature deaths in women are from cardiovascular disease.
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