Robin Utrecht
NOS News•
Carmen Dorlo
editor online
Carmen Dorlo
editor online
Chestpain? Panic. Migraine? stress. Extreme abdominal pain? Definitely pulls away.
For decades, women have been misdiagnosed or undiagnosed with a disease because the male body is often the norm in research and practice. Today, the Voices For Women foundation hands over a petition with more than 53,000 signatures to the House of Representatives to draw attention to gender-specific care.
There is currently no structural money to solve this problem. The Ministry of Health is now using 3 million euros to reduce the knowledge gap about sex and gender differences. That is a fraction of the money that is available for medical examinations in total (326.2 million euros).
For and by men
“Medicine was largely developed in the 1950s and 1960s, for and by men,” explains Professor Bart Fauser. As co-founder of Alliantie Gender and Health, he is committed to increasing awareness of gender differences in healthcare.
“At that time, it was deliberately decided to conduct studies mainly on men. Largely because serious complications could arise in women from unexpected or unintended pregnancies.” The assumption was that the study results for men were the same as for women. “That’s not right. Almost everything in the body is different for men and women.”
Recently, women have become more important as researchers and doctors. But especially abroad, more attention has been paid to this theme. “More knowledge is gradually becoming available, but it has hardly influenced healthcare in the Netherlands. Even in 2022, women are worse off than men in healthcare,” says Fauser.
Journalist and former nurse Mirjam Kaijer is an expert by experience. Only after ten years was she diagnosed with a benign tumor of the parathyroid gland. She did research and discovered that 80 percent of patients with unexplained health problems are women.
Kaijer wrote the book about her experiences I’m not a man. “There were so many reactions that I started a petition, hotline and eventually the Voices for Women foundation. I came across a cesspool. There is so much suffering. These women all want to be treated seriously and rightly.”
According to Fauser, it’s a twofold problem. Not only is there too little attention for male/female differences in general diseases, there is also hardly any attention for women-specific diseases, such as endometriosis, uterine fibroids and PCOS.
Women often have more serious and longer-lasting physical complaints, yet they are diagnosed 6 percent less often.
Kaijer also sees a large group of women with unexplained complaints at her hotline that are too quickly labeled as psychological complaints, without excluding physical causes.
The Israeli former professor Marek G Readerman previously conducted research into this. It found that doctors are more likely to see symptoms in women as due to psychosocial issues, while symptoms in men are more likely to be viewed as physical.
A similar picture emerges from another ongoing study by the UMCG. This shows that women often have more serious and longer-lasting physical complaints. Yet women are diagnosed 6 percent less often. “They also receive a referral to a specialist or physical examination less often,” says researcher Aranka Ballering.
Fatigue: psychological or physical?
Antoinetta Schutrups has experienced it. She remembers a moment at the doctor’s office. “My husband talked about his fatigue. The GP immediately suggested an examination, while my husband said it could also be stress. Nevertheless, the GP insisted on scheduling a follow-up examination. I was shocked by this, because shortly before my similar complaints were labeled ‘psychologically’. It was a completely different conversation.”
I knew I wasn’t depressed. Yet I was diagnosed with that for years.
That was years ago. After twenty years of searching, Schutrups now has a diagnosis: a benign tumor on her pituitary gland, a gland at the bottom of the brain. Schutrups had, among other things, pain in her legs, fatigue and gloom. Nevertheless, she was diagnosed with depression and was referred to mental health care. “I knew I wasn’t depressed. I had so much pain in my body, but I still wanted to do a lot of things.”
In this video she tells how she finally managed to get the right diagnosis:
Antoinetta was misdiagnosed for years: ‘you literally lose yourself’
Schutrups’ life changed drastically because of the medication. All complaints disappeared. “I have always assumed that medical science has all the knowledge to make the right assessment about my health, but I increasingly see that this is not the case. It does not happen on purpose, but due to too little knowledge of the female body It’s just a huge blind spot.”