Women are missing out on crucial heart diagnoses due to outdated guidelines aimed at men, research suggests

Women are missing out on crucial heart diagnoses due to outdated guidelines aimed at men, a study suggests.

Research from the British Heart Foundation has found that current techniques for checking for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) do not take into account natural differences between the sexes, including body size.

When the variations were taken into account, the diagnosis rate in women increased by 20 percent.

Experts suggest the ‘one size fits all’ approach needs to be updated to ensure women are no longer overlooked for heart problems.

HCM, a genetic condition that affects one in 500 people, causes the muscle wall of the heart to thicken, making it harder for the heart to pump blood around the body.

It can be life-threatening and can cause abnormal heart rhythms, which can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death.

Two-thirds of people diagnosed with the condition are men, but researchers say women are just as likely to have the condition, highlighting a diagnosis gap.

Doctors typically use a variety of tests and scans, such as measuring the thickness of the wall of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber.

For the past 50 years, the threshold for diagnosing HCM for everyone has been 15 mm.

If the muscle is thicker, the patient is considered to have HCM.

But researchers found this inadequate because it does not take into account natural differences in gender and body size.

They developed a new approach that was tested on 1,600 patients who were already known to have the disease.

The team used an AI tool they developed to analyze MRI heart scans with greater precision and in much less time than a human can.

5,000 MRI scans of healthy hearts were taken and the thickness of the left ventricular wall was measured in each heart.

From this, the researchers were able to determine what the normal thickness of the ventricular wall is for people of different ages, genders and sizes – as measured by body surface area.

Researchers found that the new method was especially beneficial for women, increasing the identification of HCM by 20 percent, according to findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Further testing was carried out on data from more than 43,000 people on the UK Biobank.

Research from the British Heart Foundation has found that current techniques for checking for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) do not take into account natural differences between the sexes, including body size (stock image)

When the new personalized thresholds were applied, the total number of people identified with HCM was lower, indicating fewer misdiagnoses.

There was also a more even split between men and women, with women making up 44 percent of those identified, reflecting the belief that women missed the diagnosis.

Lead author Dr Hunain Shiwani, from University College London and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, said the current threshold is based on studies from the 1970s and should be reconsidered.

“Having the same cutoff for everyone, regardless of age, gender or size, completely ignores the fact that heart wall thickness is strongly influenced by these factors,” he said.

‘Our research provides a long-awaited update showing that a personalized approach improves the accuracy of diagnosis.

‘Effective treatments for HCM are being used for the first time, making it more important than ever that we can correctly identify those who need them.’

When the variations were taken into account, the number of diagnoses in women increased by 20 percent (stock image)

Dr. Sonya Babu-Narayan, from the British Heart Foundation and clinical cardiologist, said: ‘Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a serious, potentially life-threatening condition, and a missed diagnosis means that people who could benefit from new and effective treatments can slip through the net. ‘

At the same time, a diagnosis in itself is a life-changing event and we must do everything we can to prevent people from being misdiagnosed.

‘By innovating the traditional one-size-fits-all approach, this study redefines abnormal heart wall thickness, which is an important contributor to the diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

‘As a result, more women and small individuals who would otherwise be underdiagnosed were identified.’