Bystanders, especially in public spaces, are less likely to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on women than men, a study presented at the European Emergency Medicine Congress this week indicated.

In private locations, older people, especially men, are less likely to get CPR, the researchers found.

They looked at nearly 40,000 cardiac arrests that happened outside of hospitals in the US and Canada between 2005 and 2015. Only around half the patient received CPR at all, with men and women receiving it about equally, overall.

But when they looked at incidents that happened in public, such as on the street, the gap was larger with 61% of the women receiving CPR compared to 68% of the men. This was consistent regardless of the woman’s age.

“Our study shows that women experiencing a cardiac arrest are less likely to get the CPR they need compared to men, especially if the emergency happens in public. We don’t know why this is the case. It could be that people are worried about hurting or touching women, or that they think a woman is less likely to be having a cardiac arrest,” said Dr Alexis Cournoyer, an emergency medicine physician and researcher at the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Canada. “We wondered if this imbalance would be even worse in younger women, because bystanders may worry even more about physical contact without consent, but this was not the case.”

Once they looked at cardiac arrests in private settings, they found that for every 10-year increase in age, men were 9% percent less likely to get CPR; for women, it was 3%

Dr. Sylvie Cossette, a PhD nurse researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute research center, Canada, said they would like to conduct further research to determine why the differences exist.

“This could help us make sure that anyone who needs CPR gets it, regardless of gender, age or location,” Dr. Cossette said.

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