|
STORRS, Conn.— Women treated with implantable cardioverter defibrillators have far lower chances of surviving potentially fatal heart arrhythmias than men, according to a new University of Connecticut study presented today [March 13, 2006] at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting in Atlanta.
The study, conducted by researchers in UConn’s School of Pharmacy and School of Medicine, found that female patients with cardiovascular disease and a high risk of fatal heart arrhythmias experienced only a 12 percent reduction in risk of death with the use of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, as opposed to a 24 percent reduction in risk for male patients with the same profile who use the devices, currently considered the treatment of choice for patients at high-risk of sudden cardiac death.
“Our study strongly suggests that implantable cardiac defibrillators should no longer be considered the treatment of choice for women at high risk of fatal heart arrhythmias,” said Nickole Henyan, a research fellow in UConn’s School of Pharmacy and the study’s lead author.
“The devices can provide life-saving therapy for many patients but, unfortunately, little has been known about their effectiveness in women until now, because male patients account for the majority of the participants in clinical trials,” Henyan said. “This study should serve as a wake-up call to the medical community that special attention needs to be paid to women’s health, especially when it comes to finding new ways to help them achieve the same survival success rates as men.”
The study, known as a meta-analysis, reviewed five controlled clinical trials involving 6,405 patients. Implantable cardioverter defibrillators were used as the primary prevention method and risk of death for men and women was assessed in all five of the trials.
Given the large number of patients evaluated through meta-analysis, the researchers were able to detect this trend not previously seen in the individual trials. Still, they stopped short of calling their study “definitive” for women because the number of male patients (4,830) still greatly surpassed the number of female patients (1,575) for which they had data.
“W omen need to be enrolled in far greater numbers in clinical trials because, when they are not, it is assumed the results seen in a trial would be seen uniformly in patients across the board,” Henyan said. “While this may be true most of the time, it is not always the case and clearly that lack of knowledge can harm patients.”
Approximately 150,000 cardioverter defibrillators are implanted annually.
March Releases
|
