Women's heart ills are often dismissed

When confronted with patients who are stressed out and showing signs of heart problems, family physicians and internists are more likely to chalk up the symptoms to anxiety if the sufferer is female, according to a study. When the patients didn't complain of a specific and recent source of stress in their lives, there was no difference in the way men and women were diagnosed for heart disease or referred to a cardiologist. The findings were presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics meeting in Washington, DC.