WEDNESDAY, May 17 (HealthDay News) -- Male Medicare beneficiaries admitted to hospitals with a primary diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction receive more procedures and have better outcomes than female Medicare patients, according to research presented recently at the American Heart Association's 7th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Washington, D.C.
Aaron D. Kugelmass, M.F., of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of 245,708 Medicare patients admitted to 1,038 full service heart hospitals during 2004 for acute myocardial infarction. They ranked the hospitals into quartiles from best to worst.
Overall, 26.8 percent of men were transferred to full service hospitals compared to 24.2 percent of women, and men more often received the following treatments: any thrombolytic (2.1 percent versus 1.7 percent), any Gllb/Illa (18.6 percent versus 15.5 percent), any PCI (44 percent versus 37.4 percent) and any coronary artery bypass surgery (15.6 percent versus 10 percent). They found an overall mortality rate of 8.8 percent for men and 10.2 percent for women, but found that the gap was smaller in Tier 1 hospitals (6.5 percent versus 7.6 percent) than in Tier 4 hospitals (11.2 percent versus 13 percent).
"This analysis indicates that the gender difference in treatments received and risk-adjusted mortality rates among Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed with a primary diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction is similar in all full service heart hospitals," the authors conclude.
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