Australian women in ICU for male-dominated conditions are at greater risk of dying compared with men, but the pattern “cuts both ways”, a study has found.
“The big question we set out to answer was, ‘Does sex or gender matter when you’re critically ill?’ And what we found is that sex absolutely matters,” Austin Health intensivist and lead researcher Dr Lucy Modra said.
“It has an impact on whether you live or die and your illness severity.”
“We’ve known for some time that women have worse outcomes than men from some typically male conditions, but what we essentially found is that this is a pattern that cuts both ways,” Modra said.
What perplexed researchers most, however, was the “minority effect”, with evidence that the gender balance of patients in an ICU could be linked to survival rates.
“What we found was that women admitted to ICUs with relatively few female patients were more likely to die than men, and vice versa. This was a big surprise – I did not expect to find that at all,” Modra said.
Source: Women more likely to die in ICU: Australian medical research