were higher rates of heart attack and heart disease events and death in men but higher rates of heart failure hospitalization among women these rates were adjusted for multiple variables including age race and various medical conditions and treatments we expected to see a decline in the rate of events however we did not expect the rates to differ between the sexes it may be that the improvements in men were achieved before our study period leaving less room for improvement in the most recent decade it could also be that the attention paid to heart disease in women over recent years has resulted in greater gains however regardless of the improvements the rates of recurrent events in people who survived a heart attack are still very high in both sexes patients should speak with their doctors to ensure that they get the right treatments to prevent secondary events and must make sure that they adopt or maintain a healthy lifestyle said peters while the database used in the study was large multiethnic and included a wide age range findings from these insured groups may not be generalisable to the overall population the study is also limited because the data sources do not include information on the severity of heart attack so the reduction in repeat attacks over time might reflect a reduced severity of the initial attacks