Gender differences in the clinical features and outcomes of patients with coronary artery disease

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Women have been at a higher risk for adverse cardiac events following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), compared with men.

Areas covered: In this review, authors discuss the gender differences that can affect the clinical outcomes after PCI and the important points that can be improved on.

Expert commentary: Various factors, such as old age and higher prevalence of comorbidities, have been considered to account for the worse clinical outcomes of PCI in women than in men. In addition, men and women have different presentations of angina or acute coronary syndrome (ACS); atypical symptoms are more frequent in women. This variation of the clinical presentation in women likely contributes to the misdiagnosis or delayed recognition of ischemia, which may explain the worse clinical outcomes. In addition, compared with men, women are less likely to be referred for revascularization for coronary artery disease (CAD) and receive less of these guideline-recommended therapies. Recently, sex differences in cardiovascular events have decreased, especially among stable CAD patients, but sex differences in the clinical outcomes of ACS remain. Further evolution of treatment is expected to narrow these sex differences among patients with CAD and improve the clinical outcomes of both men and women.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender difference
• coronary artery disease
• percutaneous coronary intervention

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer Disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.