Description: A doctor's gender could determine how early heart disease is detected in women, researchers said. A study of how physicians make decisions found women doctors focused less on age than their male counterparts, potentially overlooking an important risk factor for coronary heart disease.

"We found some differences according to the doctors' gender," said Ann Adams, a researcher at the University of Warwick who worked on the study. "One particular area we highlighted was that there were differences in how doctors were taking into account the patients’ ages."

Previous studies have shown women do not fully understand the high risk of coronary heart disease, the leading killer of both men and women in the industrialised world. According to the World Health Organisation, some 3.8 million men and 3.4 million women die from it each year. Other research has shown women do not get the same treatment for the disease as men. Adams said such findings highlight the need to further investigate evi