Does ICD therapy reduce mortality in women with heart failure?
The apparent smaller benefit of primary prevention ICD therapy in women with heart failure may be driven by their lower baseline mortality risk and underrepresentation in trials, rather than a true lack of efficacy.
The impact of ICD therapy appears to differ between men and women in this trial, with a smaller ICD benefit among women. However, the test for an interaction between gender and therapy was not significant. The lower overall mortality risk in women in the placebo group and the smaller number of women enrolled may help to explain why treatment differences in women were much smaller and difficult to detect.
Russo et al. (Wed,) studied this question.