Women in Scotland aged between 16 and 44 years are twice as likely to survive a heart attack as those in southern England, despite being four times more likely to suffer one. This is the finding of Dr Nick Dunn (Drug Safety Research Unit, Southampton) and colleagues in a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (2000;54:293).
The authors speculate that ambulance response times might be the explanation. Heart attack sufferers who wait longer than eight minutes for an ambulance are significantly more likely to die, they say. Arrival within eight minutes was achieved by 61 per cent of ambulances in Scotland but only 13 per cent in London.