Researchers have developed a new artificial-intelligence-based risk score that improves personalized care for female patients with heart attacks.

Heart attacks are one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and women who suffer a heart attack have a higher mortality rate than men. This has been a matter of concern to cardiologists for decades and has led to controversy in the medical field about the causes and effects of possible gaps in treatment.

The problem starts with the symptoms: unlike men, who usually experience chest pain with radiation to the left arm, a heart attack in women often manifests as abdominal pain radiating to the back or as nausea and vomiting.

These symptoms are unfortunately often misinterpreted by the patients and health care personnel—with disastrous consequences.

Researchers led by Thomas F. Lüscher, professor at the Center for Molecular Cardiology at the University of Zurich, have now investigated the role of biological sex in heart attacks in more detail.

“Indeed, there are notable differences in the disease phenotype observed in females and males. Our study shows that women and men differ significantly in their risk factor profile at hospital admission,” says Lüscher. When age differences at admission and existing risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes are disregarded, female heart-attack patients have higher mortality than male patients.

“However, when these differences are taken into account statistically, women and men have similar mortality,” Lüscher adds.

In their study, the researchers analyzed data from 420,781 patients across Europe who had suffered the most common type of heart attack.

“The study shows that established risk models which guide current patient management are less accurate in females and favor the undertreatment of female patients,” says first author Florian A. Wenzl of the Center for Molecular Medicine.

Read the full article about AI helping heart care at Futurity.