Heart Surgery for Older Women Is Often Risky Business, Study Finds

Key Takeaways

• Older women are more likely to die following heart bypass surgery than men, possibly due to where they get the procedure

• Women older than 65 are more likely to have their surgery at a low-quality hospital

• Women die at higher rates than men in these low-quality hospitals

FRIDAY, July 12, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Older women are more likely than older men to die following heart bypass surgery, possibly due to the quality of the hospitals where they undergo the procedure, a new study says.

Women older than 65 are 26% more likely than men to undergo the surgery at a low-quality hospital, defined as a hospital with a high rate of patient deaths in the month following their treatment, researchers said.

Women died in 7% of cases at these low-quality hospitals, compared to 5% of cases in men, results show.

What’s more, the gender disparity in deaths after a heart bypass doubles when comparing high-quality and low-quality hospitals, researchers say.

“Nationwide, women are both more likely to die after heart bypass surgery and more likely to undergo surgery at low quality hospitals,” lead researcher Dr. Catherine Wagner , an integrated thoracic surgery resident at University of Michigan Health, said in a news release.

“It is known that women have a higher [death] rate for this procedure,” Wagner said. “Our findings suggest a major need for improvement at low quality hospitals, as well as more equitable referral of women to high quality hospitals to narrow the gap we are seeing after high-risk surgery.”

The study included data on nearly 450,000 Medicare patients who received heart bypass surgery between 2015 and 2020, researchers said. The results appear in the journal JAMA Network Open .

Women more often landed in the hospital unexpectedly prior to their heart bypass surgery, results show. They also had more chronic conditions than men, which can complicate surgery.

Women also are referred later for surgery than men, possibly due to biological differences in the way heart disease develops between the genders, researchers said.

Another possible explanation for the difference is that high-quality hospitals perform more bypass surgeries every year, giving them added practice that improves their performance in high-risk surgeries.

“Altogether, there is likely a combination of both patient risk and quality of care provided at each hospital that leads to the differences we are seeing by sex for these surgical procedures,” researcher Dr. Andrew Ibrahim , co-director of the Michigan Medicine Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy, said in a news release.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more about heart bypass surgery .

SOURCE: University of Michigan, news release, July 10, 2024

What This Means For You

Women facing heart bypass surgery and their families should consider the quality of the hospital performing the procedure.