I thought the two readings this week were really interesting! The first one, about heart disease, was very informative as to the differences between men and women in relation to heart disease. I believe that a lot more research must be done on women, because women are obviously being hurt by this lack of research (i.e. clinicians failing to diagnose microvascular disease, because their diagnostic methods most fittingly address men; lack of knowledge of why microvascular disease is more common in women than men; bypass surgeries historically putting women at greater risk for post-surgery complications). What jumped out at me the most was how the patient, Kim Kachmann-Gelz, was completely disrespected by her physicians. And Dr. Sopko’s suggestion to other physicians, “Let’s listen to her,” seems to imply that most women are not taken seriously by their physicians when their symptoms do not fit what a “normal” male with cardiovascular disease would present. I think this is a major problem in medicine, and I suspect it expands beyond cardiovascular disease.

The second article was a bit over my head, but I still appreciated how informative it was. The background it gave on how research is focusing more and more on sex differences in health gave me hope that more research is being done. Since the article was published in 2001, I wonder how much research has been done since then and if interest in sex differences is still significant.