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Research Alert: Women Are More Likely to Die From Complications After Heart Valve Surgery

Written By: Adam Pick, Patient Advocate, Author & Website Founder
Published: October 17, 2024

Heart disease kills one in three women every year. That said, we are doing our best to raise awareness to this troublesome issue by speaking at congressional meetings in Washington, DC, supporting the "Go Red for Women" awareness initiative, and posting educational content specific to women's heart health.

Unfortunately... We just learned new research which further widens the gender differences specific to cardiac care for women and men. According to a report by University of Michigan Health just published in JAMA Surgery, women are more likely than men to die after heart surgery due to complications.

Critical Research Takeaways

Here are the key takeaways from the research which analyzed 850,000 cases of Medicare beneficiaries who had high risk heart surgery including coronary artery bypass grafting, aortic aneurysm repair, and aortic and mitral surgery between 2015 and 2020:

Female and male patients experience a post-op complication after heart surgery at equal rate.
Women are more prone than men to die when these complications strike.
Medical teams need to do more to address this disparity.

According to Dr. Catherine Wagner, the lead researcher of the report, about 15% of male and female patients experienced a post-op complication. However, Dr. Wagner found that while 8.6% of men who experienced these complications died (something doctors call "failure to rescue"), that number rose to 10.7% among women. The most common post-surgical complications were kidney failure, pneumonia and lung failure.

Dr. Catherine Wagner

"This is an issue for the entire United States health care system: we are failing to rescue women after high-risk surgery, even though the rate of postoperative complication is similar to men," Dr. Wagner said in a university news release.

Acknowledging The Gender Disparity

One clue to the gender disparity is outcomes. "In our study, female patients had a lower rate of re-operation than males," said study co-author Dr. Gorav Ailawadi. A re-operation within this context means a second procedure was performed within days of heart surgery because a complication arose. "The lower rate of re-operation among women may not be due to a lower need for re-operation; it could instead be a signal that their complications were not appropriately addressed," said Ailawadi.

Dr. Gorav Ailawadi

Needless to say, this is troublesome and compounds the disparity between cardiac care for men and women. According to the research, this disparity is in addition to previous studies that have found that signs and symptoms of common disease, such as heart attack and stroke, are more often either missed or not taken seriously for female patients.

Many Thanks to University of Michigan Health!

As a patient advocacy group, HeartValveSurgery.com will do our best to help examine and drive awareness to same sex differences in heart disease management and treatment. That said, we need to acknowledge and thank University of Michigan Health for resourcing this important research initiative that will hopefully lead to important conversations and better cardiac care for women's heart health.

Written by Adam Pick - Patient & Website Founder

Adam Pick is a heart valve patient and author of The Patient's Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. In 2006, Adam founded HeartValveSurgery.com to educate and empower patients. This award-winning website has helped over 10 million people fight heart valve disease. Adam has been featured by the American Heart Association and Medical News Today.

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