Gender medicine: Why women are often overlooked in medicine!

Gender medicine: Why women are often overlooked in medicine!

In the medical world, it is becoming increasingly clear that women are often neglected in health care. A current article by Vol.at shows that it is high time to reconsider gender-specific differences in medicine. For various reasons, women have difficulty recognizing heart attacks. Symptoms such as fatigue, back pain or jaw pain are often not associated with a heart problem, which can lead to delayed treatment.

Christa Bauer, clinical psychologist at "Femail", warns that medicine has taken the man as a yardstick for decades. This unit medicine not only means that heart attacks remain undetected in women, but also means that medication often does not show the desired effect and do not fit prostheses. Gender medicine is therefore seen as a big step in the right direction, but is usually only an optional subject in medical training in Austria, which should be urgently changed.

The high price of gender blindness

The symptoms of a heart attack are often non -specific in women, which makes it difficult to diagnose early. Scientific knowledge proves that the symptoms of diabetes are also different. Increased sober blood sugar is often considered a diagnosis criterion for men, while in women there can also be unobtrusive tests. This shows that it is time to reform medical practice and also demand gender -specific analyzes in studies, as is increasingly required by specialist journals.

a step in the right direction

However, there are positive developments: At the MedUni Vienna, courses on gender medicine are now offered to raise awareness of gender differences. These changes are important because cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death in men and women worldwide. Current research shows that there are differences in anatomy, prevalence and symptoms between the sexes. Nevertheless, current guidelines take these differences into account only inadequately, since women are often underrepresented in clinical studies.

An EU regulation of 2022 calls for different sexes in medical studies. Such developments are crucial to better understand women's health needs. The problems do not stop in cardiovascular diseases: diseases such as endometriosis, which 10-15% of women are affected, are often only diagnosed after years. This example illustrates the neglect of female health issues in research and practice.

At the annual Vorarlberg Women's Health Day, organized by "Femail", it is already being worked on to put these topics in the foreground. This is not only talking about menstruation and menopause, but also about the special challenges with which women are confronted in health care. It is finally time that medicine becomes equal and justice for all genders.