Researchers not sure why the disparity exists
FRIDAY, Feb. 24, 2017 (HealthDay News) — Male stroke patients are more than twice as likely as female patients to receive tissue plasminogen activator treatment within 30 minutes of hospital arrival, according to research presented at the annual American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference, held from Feb. 22 to 24 in Houston.
Archit Bhatt, M.D., M.P.H., a neurologist with the Providence Brain and Spine Institute in Portland, Ore., and colleagues evaluated 2,695 stroke patients treated at one of 26 hospitals in the Pacific Northwest between 2009 and 2015. Only 3.9 percent had ultrafast door-to-needle times (<30 minutes).
Three factors appeared to make a difference in whether or not stroke patients received ultrafast treatment: sex, arrival method, and arrival day. Men were 2.2 times more likely than women to get ultrafast treatment; patients arriving by ambulance were 4.7 times more likely to get the fast treatment than stroke patients driven to the hospital; and weekday arrivals were nearly twice as likely as those arriving during the evening or weekends to get ultrafast treatment.
Regarding the gender disparity, “We could not find a reason for the disparity,” Bhatt told HealthDay. “At least, there was nothing measurable in the database.”
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