{"id":22072,"date":"2024-08-04T14:16:31","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T12:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intimina.com\/blog\/?p=22072"},"modified":"2024-08-04T14:16:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T12:16:54","slug":"men-women-diagnosis-disparities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intimina.com\/blog\/men-women-diagnosis-disparities\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Women Are More Likely To Be Misdiagnosed for Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women are not only listened to less in the <\/span>workplace<\/span><\/a> and in <\/span>leadership roles<\/span><\/a>, but also by the people we are supposed to trust the most \u2013 medical providers. <\/span><\/p>\n

From ovarian cysts being labeled as normal \u201cperiod pain\u201d to autoimmune disorders being misdiagnosed as depression, a host of women\u2019s health issues are commonly misdiagnosed by doctors, or simply dismissed as a figment of their imagination. <\/span><\/p>\n

This disparity can have wide-ranging, significant, and even fatal implications; in one study published by Academic Emergency Medicine, women who visited the ER reporting severe stomach pain were forced to wait, on average, nearly one third of the time longer than men who went in complaining about the same symptoms. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So, why does this kind of gaslighting still happen in the age of modern medicine, and what can we do about it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Women In Pain May Be Treated Less Seriously Than Men<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the past, doctors used to commonly diagnose women who came into their office with all types of physical and mental ailments with \u201c<\/span>hysteria<\/span><\/a>,\u201d and prescribe pills (often with sedative effects) to calm them down. <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s not much different today. Women who tell their doctors that they\u2019re in pain are significantly more likely than men complaining of the same symptoms to receive prescriptions for <\/strong><\/span>sedatives<\/i>, and not painkillers. <\/strong><\/p>\n

In <\/span>one study<\/span><\/a>, women who had undergone coronary bypass surgery were only 50% as likely to be prescribed painkillers, compared to men who had received the exact same medical procedure. In the ER in the United States, men only wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain, while women wait an average of <\/span>65 minutes<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some more troubling statistics recently published in the <\/span>Washington Post<\/span><\/a> illustrate the discrepancy between the way female and male pain is treated, and the implications of doing so:<\/span><\/p>\n