
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 3, 1990                   TAG: 9005030482
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short

ARTERY SURGERY DANGER FOUND HIGHER FOR WOMEN

Women are nearly twice as likely as men to die from a common form of coronary artery surgery - a fact that researchers now suspect reflects a tendency among physicians to neglect heart disease symptoms in women.

Researchers in Los Angeles, in findings published this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine, have found that women are generally older and sicker than men when they are referred for coronary artery bypass surgery, apparently because doctors tend to take women's symptoms less seriously than men's.

And that difference in age and degree of sickness at the time of surgery explains women's higher risk of dying from the operation, the researchers found. Their smaller size is not responsible for the increased risk, as had been thought.

"Often, I think, physicians are trying to prove that women don't have coronary disease," said Dr. Steven S. Khan of Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "It's in the teaching of cardiology, that chest pain [in women] is most likely due to something other than the heart."

by CNB