Study: Women Less Likely Than Men to Get Active Medical Treatment
The Facts
- Research from the University of St. Andrews published in PLOS One Wednesday found that women are less likely than men with the same medical condition to be offered active management such as surgery, a stent or a strong painkiller.
- The review screened 1,112 published studies and included 41 papers. Of the 38 that analyzed patient records, 33 reported a statistically significant difference in the treatment given to male and female patients.
- Women with myocardial infarction, heart failure or supraventricular tachycardia were more often managed with medication, while men more often received coronary bypass, percutaneous coronary intervention or ablation, the analysis found.
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The Spin
Left narrative
Women with the exact same diagnosis keep getting pills while men get the stent, the bypass, the transplant or the deep brain stimulation. No clinical guideline anywhere recommends treating women differently, so these gaps come from assumptions. Kidney disease gets missed because tests built around male muscle mass flag it too late, and men still get transplants far more often.
Right narrative
The numbers don't back up these claims. In the U.S., females made up 58% of participants in NIH-funded trials over nearly three decades, and women's health research draws more government funding than men's. Meanwhile, men die of heart disease at far higher age-adjusted rates, a fact buried by campaigns built on raw death counts. Treatment differences track real differences in risk.