Significant Gender Disparity in Misdiagnoses of Stroke Patients

A new study led by a research team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore finds that emergency room physicians tended to misdiagnose stroke symptoms among women patients more often than for their male patients.

Researchers examined federal health care data for more than 187,000 patients at 1,016 hospital emergency rooms. They found that 12.7 percent of patients later admitted to the hospital after suffering a stroke had been sent home from the emergency room within the last 30 days after complaining of stroke-like symptoms. Women were 33 percent more likely than men to misdiagnosed, according to the study.

The study, “Missed Diagnosis of Stroke in the Emergency Department: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of a Large Population-Based Sample,” was published on the website of the journal Diagnosis. The article may be downloaded here.