Gender Differences in Cognitive Test Performance in Adults With Heart Failure.
Amber D Rochette, Mary Beth Spitznagel, Lawrence H Sweet and 4 others
PMID 27028589WHAT IT FOUND
Women with heart failure scored better on memory tests than men, but attention and executive function scores and impairment rates did not differ by gender.
Key findings
01Among 183 adults with heart failure, men and women did not differ on attention/executive function after adjustment for age, education, ejection fraction, fitness, hypertension, bypass or valve surgery, myocardial infarction history and smoking.
02Women performed better than men on Sum of Learning Trials 1 to 5, Short Delay Free Recall and Long Delay Free Recall, but not Total Recognition Hits.
03The prevalence of cognitive impairment, defined as a T-score of 35 or lower, did not differ between men and women in either domain or for any impaired test.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show whether heart failure caused the cognitive differences or how they changed over time. It had no closely matched control group without heart failure. The sample was mostly NYHA class II and III, so it says little about people with very severe heart failure. It excluded dementia, stroke, head injury with loss of consciousness, severe psychiatric disorders, substance abuse or dependence, and renal failure, so results may not apply to more complex patients. The groups differed in education, ejection fraction, fitness and some cardiac histories, and the analysis only adjusted for these measured differences. The paper lacked information on heart failure duration, type, timing and severity of cardiac events.
Declared interests
The named authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that men with heart failure are more impaired overall. Women had better memory test scores, but the prevalence of impairment did not differ between men and women.