Just Four Percent of Interventional Cardiologists Are Women Women make up just 4 percent of interventional cardiologists and they perform only 3 percent of all percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), according to a new study conducted through the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) Women in Innovations (WIN) initiative and presented today at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) 2014 conference. "Women continue to be underrepresented in interventional cardiology," said WIN Chair Cindy L. Grines, M.D., FSCAI. "Today's study highlights the ongoing gender gap in interventional cardiology and the need to continue to support women interested in joining the profession." For the study, researchers reviewed data on nearly 2.5 million PCI procedures at 1,431 U.S. hospitals between 2009 and 2013 in the CathPCI Registry to determine how many procedures were performed by a female operator and outcomes of those procedures. The study found women were similarly or more likely than male operators to treat high-risk patients, including patients with heart attack (42.2 percent), cardiac arrest (2.5 percent) and cardiogenic shock (2.5 percent), a condition in which the heart suddenly can't pump enough blood. Mortality rates among all female operators was a low 1.8 percent, and the mortality rate for elective PCI cases was just 0.46 percent. Women also were likely to work in urban (67 percent) and academic (57 percent) settings and have a higher rate of uninsured patients (12 percent). Of female operators in the study, 41 percent worked in an institution where there were no other female interventional cardiologists. "Women are likely to take challenging cases in challenging settings," said Dr. Grines. "This study indicates female interventional cardiologists are making significant contributions to the field, and we want to continue to support them and encourage more women to select interventional cardiology as their specialty." SCAI's WIN program has been a leader in supporting women in interventional cardiology, as well as efforts to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease in women and improve treatment of women with heart disease. WIN provides ongoing educational and networking events, leadership opportunities and resources to support career development for female interventional cardiologists. "It's important that we encourage women to pursue careers in interventional cardiology," said WIN Co-founder Roxana Mehran, M.D., FSCAI. "Women's heart disease symptoms can be different than men's, and women may experience different risk factors – such as the connections between pregnancy complications and heart disease. Female interventional cardiologists can be attuned to these differences, can provide support to women managing heart disease and can be important advocates in raising awareness of heart disease in women. Source
