Hello and welcome to more or less your guide to the numbers in the news and in the world

all around us.

This week we look at one particularly disturbing figure from another world service programme,

the Y Factor.

In US hospitals, 5,000 more women die a year of heart attack than men.

5,000 sounds like a big difference.

Should we really be worried that our sex may determine the outcome from suffering a heart attack?

Tom Hill has been looking at the figures, Tom what have you found?

Well I couldn't find any evidence for that particular figure.

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has data from US medical facilities

between 2010 and 2016.

This showed that 185,461 women died of a heart attack as the underlying cause of death

versus 258,808 men.

OK so more men die in terms of total numbers but aren't heart attacks more common in men

to start with?

Yes, most studies suggest a greater prevalence in men but that's not the whole story.

I spoke to Dr Noel Barry-Mers who's director of the Barbastrysend Women's Heart Centre

at the Seedas Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

She explained the difference between men and women.

When we get into our seniors over the age of 65 and we get to our very old over the age

of 75 and 85, the mortality for heart attacks is the same for women and men.

The disparity is actually in these young women under 65 and the biggest gaps that our

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