La Crosse, WI (WXOW) - A new and wide-ranging study that raises disturbing doubts about women's health care.
It finds a significant gender gap in the diagnosis and the outcome of heart attacks in younger women.
Data on more than one million patients were analyzed for the largest study of its kind ever done.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it finds that women under age forty-five who have heart attacks are more likely to have no chest pain and more likely to die in the hospital afterward.
For doctors, it's a surprise and a warning.
Death rates from heart attacks are increasing in 35-to-50-year-old women, even as they decline in other groups.
One expert calls it a "double whammy".
Not only don't they expect heart attacks in younger women but they are harder to diagnose when they occur.
