First Meeting of the Committee to Study Women in Urgent and Emergency Health Care (MUEjeres I)

The lack of a gendered view of health is one of the main causes of health inequality. The Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES) created a Committee to Study Women in Urgent and Emergency Health Care (MUEjeres). The committee’s first conference was held on March 24, 2023, in Malaga, Spain. Experts addressed gender-based differences in hospital emergency department care in such time-dependent conditions as stroke, atrial fibrillation, and acute coronary syndrome. Also addressed were differences in emergency management of pain. This paper reviews the following main conclusions drawn in the plenary talks, which combined both clinical experience and the scientific evidence base. Regarding stroke, gender-based differences in the rates of stroke code activation can help explain why the overall prognosis is worse in women, a hypothesis that merits further study. Multiple factors affect the higher prevalences in women of ischemic heart disease with nonobstructive coronary arteries, myocardial infarction with nonobstructive coronary arteries, and non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome. Given that clinical practice guidelines for these conditions base their recommendations on studies that enrolled few women, it is important to take a gender-based view when treating patients with this condicions. The presentation of atrial fibrillation in women leads to atypical symptoms such as weakness and fatigue, possibly explained by the various genetic, hormonal, electrical, anatomical, and structural differences between the genders. Likewise, these differences could explain variability in complications. Regarding dimensions of pain, a gender difference to consider is that sensory-discriminative components predominate in men whereas cognitive-evaluative and affective-motivational components predominate in women.