Michigan Study Evaluates Physician-Patient Gender Concordance in PCI Practice

May 25, 2021—Michigan Medicine, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced that a study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium (BMC2) found that there does not appear to be a relationship between operator and patient gender and outcome in patients undergoing coronary angioplasty or stenting.

The findings from the DISCO study, which asks if an interventionalist’s sex impacts coronary outcomes, were published by Prasanthi Yelavarthy, MD, et al online in Catheterization & Cardiovascular Interventions. Michigan Medicine noted that these findings come in the wake of other studies that suggest female patients treated by female physicians have better outcomes.

According to Michigan Medicine, the BMC2’s DISCO study looked at procedures performed by 385 male interventional cardiologists and 18 female interventional cardiologists at 48 nonfederal hospitals across the state of Michigan. As noted in the announcement, female interventional cardiologists continue to be markedly underrepresented and only perform a small percentage of cases, with women accounting for only 4.5% of interventional cardiologists and performing only 3% of procedures.

According to Michigan Medicine, the investigators found that despite interventional cardiology remaining an overwhelmingly male-dominated specialty, female physicians in this field stand out as excellent practitioners, with the following results:

• Coronary angioplasties performed by female physicians were more frequently rated as appropriate as compared to procedures performed by their male counterparts, among those studied
• Female interventional cardiologists more frequently prescribed recommended medical therapies than male interventional cardiologists
• No differences in death, kidney injury, major bleeding, or blood transfusions were found between patients treated by male or female interventional cardiologists

Dr. Yelavarthy commented in the Michigan Medicine press release, “While the overall care processes and outcomes in Michigan were great, and similar for operators of either sex, the female physicians scored higher on appropriateness and postprocedural therapy. These findings would benefit female trainees who are considering interventional cardiology but are concerned about perceived barriers.”

Michigan Medicine advised that BMC2 is a collaborative consortium of health care providers in Michigan comprising three statewide quality improvement projects: percutaneous coronary interventions, vascular surgeries and carotid interventions, and transcatheter aortic valve replacement. All projects are designed to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. The collaboration across BMC2 overcomes the barriers of traditional market and academic competition. All projects collect, audit, and organize data and report procedural variables and outcomes to individual operators and institutions.