The chance of doctors spotting a heart attack in women could be significantly improved by the introduction of a more sensitive and up-to-date blood test, a study has claimed.
The research indicates that double the number of heart attacks could be detected with the test, which can identify very small traces of a protein that suggest the heart muscle could be damaged.
Standard tests used currently by many doctors are only able to detect higher levels of this protein, known as troponin.
The study, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and published in the BMJ, looked at 1,226 people who were suffering a suspected heart attack.
Using the usual troponin test, 117 men were diagnosed as having a heart attack compared to 55 women.
However, nearly twice that number of women were diagnosed with heart attacks as a result of being given the more sensitive test, up to 111. But this test only detected a handful of additional cases amongst men.
The researchers saw that the additional heart attack cases identified by the more sensitive test were at a higher risk of death as a result of the attack or of having another attack the following year.
Researcher Dr Anoop Shah said that, although similar numbers of men and women go to A&E suffering with chest pains, women are actually less likely to be diagnosed with a heart attack.
“At the moment one in 10 women with chest pains will be diagnosed with a heart attack compared to one in five men,” he said.
“Our findings suggest one reason for this difference in diagnosis rates of men and women is that we, as doctors, may have been using a threshold for troponin testing that is too high in women.
“For some reason, women are less likely to have obvious symptoms and if the test result comes back negative then they might be sent home only to have an event [heart attack] in the next few months because they were not treated appropriately.”
He added that more research is needed to determine if adopting a lower troponin threshold will save more women’s lives – and have begun a trial to look into this.
Professor Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation said: “If these results are confirmed in the much larger clinical trial we’re funding, using a high sensitivity troponin test, with a threshold specific to each gender, could save many more women’s lives by identifying them earlier to take steps to prevent them dying or having another, bigger heart attack.”