Is there detrimental gender bias in preoperative cardiac management of patients undergoing vascular surgery?

Background: To investigate the possibility of gender bias in the cardiac management of patients who undergo peripheral vascular surgery, we examined the hospital data and outcomes for 350 adult men and 128 women who underwent vascular surgery from September 1987 to December 1991. Methods and Results: There were no significant differences between the two groups in age at operation, incidence of standard risk factors for myocardial infarction, or incidence or duration of episodes of perioperative silent ischemia. Nevertheless, a significantly lower percentage of women than men had undergone prior coronary bypass procedures (6.3% and 17.1%, respectively; P<.01), an apparent example of gender bias. However, there was no significant difference in the incidence of perioperative myocardial infarction in women (3.9%) compared with men (4.0%). Furthermore, actuarial analysis showed that at 24 months after operation a significantly higher percentage of women (77.9%) had escaped late cardiac death and cardiac complications than men (71.9%; P<.05). Conclusions: These findings indicate that apparent gender bias in the preoperative cardiac management of this group of women who underwent vascular surgery may have had no detrimental effect on short- and long-term incidence of cardiac death and complications, and may represent sound clinical judgment rather than true bias. However, the possibility that female patients might have had even better short- and long-term cardiac results if they had undergone more preoperative cardiac revascularization cannot be discounted.