A new study finds that women under age 60 are three times more likely than men of the same age to die during or shortly after heart surgery.

Dr. Viola Vaccarino

Leading researcher Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, came to this conclusion after studying the medical records of almost 60,000 male and female heart patients who had bypass surgery at 23 American medical centers. She says that the death rate in female heart patients appears to decrease after age 60.

Dr. Vaccarino and her colleagues do not know yet why younger female heart patients face a higher risk than men of dying from heart bypass surgery. But they suspect that women, more than men, tend to ignore symptoms that may indicate the onset of serious heart ailments. So by the time they are referred for heart surgery, they may have already developed a severe heart condition.

The doctors also say that bypass surgery is usually more difficult to perform on women because they tend to have smaller arteries than men. Dr. Viola Vaccarino says that women should be examined for signs of heart disease well before they reach age fifty. Dr. Vaccarino said, "We can speculate that some of these women could be those who have strong family history of heart disease. In any case, any woman should be alerted that she could develop heart disease, even if she is not an elderly woman."

Dr. Vaccarino also points out that many more female heart patients would die without coronary artery bypass surgery than die with it.

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