All the initial research on heart disease was done on men. It took a long time for women to catch up. This latest research from East Anglia University is a further catch up, helping to diagnose heart failure in women – meaning more ­female patients can be treated at an earlier stage.

Research teams from the ­Universities of East Anglia (UEA), Sheffield and Leeds, have fine-tuned how MRI scans (magnetic resonance imaging) can be used to detect heart failure in women’s hearts, making it more accurate.

This result in 16.5% more diagnoses.

“This improved method will increase early detection, meaning more women can get life-saving ­treatment sooner,” says lead author DrPankaj Garg of UEA.

“This could have huge impact in the NHS, which diagnoses around 200,000 patients with heart failure each year.”

When a heart starts to fail, it is unable to pump blood out ­effectively, and so the pressure in the heart rises. So one of the best ways of ­diagnosing heart failure is to measure pressures inside the heart with a tube called a catheter. It’s accurate but carries a risk.So doctors use echocardiograms, based on ultrasound, to assess heart function, though they are inaccurate in up to 50% of cases.

MRI is much more accurate but not quite accurate enough to diagnose heart failure in women, especially in early or borderline disease.

According to co-author Professor Andy Swift of Sheffield’s School of Medicine: “Women’s hearts are ­biologically different to men’s.

“Our work suggests that in heart failure, women’s hearts may respond differently in response to increases
in pressure.”

Heart failure is classed differently, depending on the amount of blood pumped out of the main chamber of the heart with every beat, known as the heart’s ejection fraction.

Women suffer disproportionately from a type of heart failure where the pumping function of the heart is preserved but the ability of the heart to relax between beats and fill with blood isimpaired.

Co-author Dr Peter Swoboda, of Leeds’ Faculty of Medicine, said: “This research will help diagnose heart failure in women more quickly and get them established on life-saving treatments sooner.”

Experts agree this research is very positive because it paves the way for thousands of people to get diagnosed and treated at an earlier stage. For some time the Women’s Health Strategy for England has been asking for more research that looks at the differences between how conditions affect men and women.

About time that the inadequacies between genders is corrected.