Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women irrespective of race or ethnicity, and about half of these deaths are caused by coronary artery disease. Several studies have reported that cardiovascular diseases manifest themself with a delay of about 7–10 years in women and that they have higher in-hospital mortality. It has not yet been established whether female gender itself, through biological and sociocultural differences, represents a risk factor for early in-hospital mortality in ST-segment elevation acute myocardial infarction (STEMI). The aim of our study was to identify the angiographic particularities in women with STEMI from North East Romania.
Material and Methods: For one year, 207 (31.7%) women and 445 (68.3%) men diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction were hospitalized in the Cardiology Clinic of the “Prof. Dr. George I. M. Georgescu” Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Iași, Romania.
Results: The highest incidence of symptom onset was between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m., this morning polarization being more obvious in women. Within the first two hours of admission to the hospital, coronary angiography was performed in 78.1% of men and only 67.3% of women, the difference being statistically significant (p <0.05). We found that a large number of women had multivascular coronary disease (47.9% vs. 42.3%). At the same time, we found that left main disease and multivascular disease were more frequent in women than in men (3.8% vs. 0.7%, p = 0.001 for left main plus two-vessel disease, and 19.4% vs. 14.8%, p = 0.0005 for three-vessel disease).
Conclusions: In women, coronary events began more frequently in the morning, with atypical symptoms; also, fewer women presented to the hospital within the first 12 hours after the onset of the acute event. Compared to men, women from North East Romania present a higher incidence of multivascular atherosclerotic coronary lessions, indicating a higher severity of STEMI in the female population from this geographical area.
