Women are 27% less likely than men to receive first aid for a heart attack in public due to first responders’ hesitation to touch their breasts without their consent, a study suggests.
“People fear exposing a woman’s breasts, which can lead them to hesitate or avoid performing cardiac massage,” Dr Christophe Scavée, cardiologist at the Saint-Luc university clinics in Brussels, reportedly told RTL info , according to 7sur7.
According to a series of recent studies, reported by the Belgian media, women are 27% less likely than men to receive a cardiac massage if they experience discomfort in public.
This data is explained in particular by “thoracic modesty”, in the words of the doctor, and societal prejudices which mean that the first witnesses could hesitate to come to the aid of a woman because of the necessary contact with her chest, had reported a University of Pennsylvania study in 2017.
Except that in the case of a cardiac arrest, where every minute counts, this hesitation can cost the patient dearly, the doctor continued to RTL info.
But in addition to modesty, there would also be a lack of awareness of the symptoms of heart attack in women, which differ from the symptoms in men, a Canadian study carried out between 2005 and 2015 on more than 40,000 patients would have noted.
Indeed, in women, heart attacks can result more in shortness of breath or intense fatigue, rather than severe chest pain, which makes them less obvious to detect, reported the Belgian media.
The study also revealed that only 61% of women victims of a cardiac arrest in public would have received a cardiac massage, compared to 68% among men: a difference which “increases the mortality of women following an arrest heart,” according to Dr. Alexis Cournoyer, author of the study.
To try to raise awareness of this problem and encourage people to overcome the barrier of modesty, first aid training in Sweden has been offered for several years with mannequins fitted with a chest, to try to better prepare first aiders, according to the Belgian media , but this practice is not yet widespread.
