Women often undertreated, study finds.

2003 FEB 13 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A new study adds to the evidence that many women who suffer heart attacks are not getting adequate treatment.

The study found that doctors often fail to prescribe aspirin, beta blockers, and cholesterol-lowering drugs to these women, even though the medications have been shown to prevent further heart attacks or other heart trouble.

The researchers did not look at how often these drugs were offered to men. But other studies have shown that men and women alike are undertreated for heart disease, and women are treated even less aggressively than men.

"Doctors in our society just aren't good with prevention efforts," said study coauthor Dr. Michael Shlipak of the University of California at San Francisco.

Shlipak said there could be a number of reasons for the findings. There is a lingering myth that heart disease is primarily a man's disease, he said. Moreover, both doctors and patients fear the side effects of some preventive drugs, he said.

The study, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, involved 2763 postmenopausal women with heart disease. All had suffered heart attacks or chest pain caused by blocked arteries, or had undergone bypass surgery or angioplasty.

Researchers found that beta blockers, which slow the heart rate, were used by only a third of the women who should have been taking them. Only half the women who qualified for cholesterol-lowering drugs took them.