Women derive double benefit from heart failure device than men

Women show better results than men with device therapy to prevent the progression of mild heart failure, according to a study.

Women with mild heart disease who had a cardiac resynchronisation device combined with a defibrillator (CRT-D) implanted had a 70% reduction in heart failure alone and a 72% reduction in death from any cause.

Men received some benefit from the therapy, but not the out-of-the-park results seen in women.

"This is the first study in which a heart failure therapy has proven more effective in women than in men," said cardiologist Dr Arthur Moss, professor of Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Researchers found that females receiving CRT-D therapy to prevent heart failure progression had significantly better outcomes than males receiving the therapy.

Reduction of heart failure in females was twice that of males, 70% versus 35%.

While women saw a significant 72% reduction in death from any cause, there was no evident reduction in men.

This gender-based analysis comes less than two months after an advisory panel to the US Food and Drug Administration recommended that the device, which is developed by Boston Scientific, be approved for use in patients with mild heart failure.

The device is already approved to treat patients with severe heart failure.

If approved for the new prevention of heart failure indication, nearly four million more Americans could be candidates for treatment with the CRT-D.

"Anecdotally, we know that women are offered devices to treat heart failure less often than men. We're hopeful that these results will change the mindset of physicians and that they will apply this type of therapy as indicated in women as well as in men," said Dr. Wojciech Zareba, co-author of the study.

In women with mild heart failure, CRT-D therapy effectively prevented deterioration of the heart, otherwise known as cardiac remodelling.

The study was presented at the Heart Rhythm Society's 31st Annual Scientific Sessions.