Gender Differences in Clinical Features and In‐hospital Outcomes in ST‐segment Elevation Acute Myocardial Infarction: From the Korean Acute Myocardial Infarction Registry (KAMIR) Study

Background Studies have suggested that women are biologically different and that female gender itself is independently associated with poor clinical outcome after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Hypothesis We analyzed data from the Korean Acute Myocardial Infarction Registry (KAMIR) to assess gender differences in in‐hospital outcomes post ST‐segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Methods Between November 2005 and July 2007, 4037 patients who were admitted with STEMI to 41 facilities were registered into the KAMIR database; patients admitted within 72 hours of symptom onset were selected and included in this study. Results The proportion of patients who had reperfusion therapy within 12 hours from chest pain onset was lower in women. Women had higher rates of in‐hospital mortality (8.6% vs 3.2%, P < .01), noncardiac death (1.5% vs 0.4%, P < .01), cardiac death (7.1% vs 2.8%, P < .01), and stroke (1.2% vs 0.5%, P < .05) than men. Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified age, previous angina, hypertension, a Killip class ≥ II, a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) < 40%, and a thrombolysis in myocardial infarction flow (TIMI) grade ≤ 3 after angioplasty as independent risk factors for in‐hospital death for all patients; however, female gender itself was not an independent risk factor. Conclusions The results of this study show that although women have a higher in‐hospital mortality than men, female gender itself is not an independent risk factor for in‐hospital mortality. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.