Latest findings have revealed that a large percentage of women and young men are unaware of their health conditions until they are struck with a major problem. Among the 70% cases where patients were unaware of their cardiac condition, it was found that 60% were women and young men. Ironically, these two groups of people are considered low risk groups in cardiac problems.

It was also found that women and young men were less likely to be struck with major disasters which called for intensive therapy and treatments. This turned out to be a major disadvantage because lack of major problems did not qualify them to be administered preventive medication. The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Minnesota in collaboration with Minneapolis Heart Institute of Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

Michael Miedema from University of Minnesota, who is a cardiology fellow at the University, said that when a person has a well established cardiac condition, the guidelines and precautionary measures that he has to follow are specifically elucidated. This might include intensive therapy and use of drugs such as statin and aspirin on a regular basis, notwithstanding the gender and age of the patient. In people who are not diagnosed with an established or a known cardiac problem, preventive medication is not as clearly detailed. People who do not qualify as high risk are often ignored in the process and a major portion of this patient base is constituted of women and young men.

In order to come to this conclusion, researchers studied the cases of heart attacks admitted to the hospital in people who did not have a previous record of the heart problems. It was found that a lot of these people were not on any preventive medicine. Average age of men in this category was 55 and women were 65 or less. It was found that these people, who constituted 41.7% of patients, were not on statin or aspirin. This is despite the fact these patients registered a similar level of cholesterol when compared to the high risk patients.

3038 patients were studied during the period between March 2003 and January 2010. it was found that among people who were admitted to the hospital with heart attacks, 70% were not considered heart patients. The standard code used to assess risk is the Framingham risk score. This scale, which is to take into considerations different health aspects such as blood pressure and cholesterol, is not very accurate in diagnosing risk factor in patients with lesser known heart diseases since it gives higher priority to age and gender.

Researchers said that preventive medicines need to be improved on a general scale.