Short-term prognosis of contemporary interventional therapy of ST-elevation myocardial infarction: does gender matter?

A higher mortality risk for women with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) has been a common finding in the past, even after acute percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We set out to analyze whether there are gender differences in real-world contemporary treatment and outcomes of STEMI.A retrospective analysis of all consecutive patients with STEMI and acute coronary angiography with the intention of performing a PCI at our center 6/1999-6/2006 was carried out (n = 566). Data were examined for gender-specific differences regarding patients' characteristics, referral patterns, timing of acute symptoms, angiographic findings, procedural details, and adverse events at 30 days after PCI.Women (n = 161) were on average 8 years older than men (n = 405), had higher co-morbidity, were more often transported to the hospital by ambulance and presented less often to the emergency room on their own (4.2% vs. 12.6% in men, P = 0.02). The pre-hospital delay from symptom onset to admission was significantly longer for women (median 185 vs. 135 min, P0.02). There was no gender difference in time from admission to PCI (median 46 min vs. 48 min, P = 0.42). Both genders received PCI with similar frequency (88.8% vs. 92.4%, P = 0.19), with similar success rates (83.2% vs. 85.3%, P = 0.68). Thirty-day overall mortality for women was not significantly higher than for men (8.7% vs. 7.2%, P = 0.6). Re-infarction or stroke within 30 days were rare for both genders without gender-specific differences whereas bleeding necessitating blood replacement was significantly more frequent in women (16.8% vs. 5.9%, P0.001). In multivariate analysis, female gender was not independently associated with a higher risk of 30-day mortality (OR 0.964, P = 0.93).Women underwent PCI therapy for STEMI with the same frequency and the same angiographic success as men. Despite their more advanced age and the higher prevalence of co-morbidities, they did not have a significantly higher 30-day mortality rate than men. Female gender was not an independent risk factor of 30-day mortality. Longer pre-hospital delays before hospital admission in women indicate that awareness of risk from coronary artery disease should be further raised in women.