[Care according to patient gender in emergency services: different or unequal?]

It has been recently published different studies that support the idea that the health services make variability according to the patient's gender. In this sense, the aim of this study is to find out if there are gender differences in diagnostic and therapeutic care in health problems attended in emergency services. With the purpose of assessing this problem in a public hospital in Spain we have make a secondary analysis of the patient's findings got in the Emergency Service of Elche Hospital during four weeks in 1985.3, 709 patients were attended during this period. The results show a greater utilization of this service by men ORmale/female = 1.37 (1.29-1.47). The waiting time was higher for women (35 minutes) than men (29 minutes) (p = 0.0001), and also the time of getting a diagnostic (86 minutes vs 76) (p = 0.003). Diagnostic test were more frequent perform to women than men ORmale/female = 0.75 (0.64-0.85) meanwhile men receive treatment more often, ORmale/female = 1.34 (1.09-1.47). The associations are adjusted for age, diagnostic groups and patient's destination. Taking into account the possibility of more severity diseases among men that could explain the shorter waiting time and the therapeutic effort, the results show the possibility of an inequality attitude in the emergency services that would need further investigations. The more frequent use of diagnostic tests among women and consequently the longer diagnostic time, could be explain by the fact of the higher rates of nonspecific pathology.