Gender and surgical revascularization: there is a light at the end of the tunnel?

Female sex is perceived as an important risk factor for surgery and is included in the most diffused operative risk scores, as EuroSCORE II (1) and STS score (2). In a recent paper, it was again emphasized that in a ‘real world’ unselected cohort of patients who underwent myocardial revascularization, survival was superior as well as the rate of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) was inferior with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) rather than with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in men, but not in women. Outcomes of women were worse than men and were equivalent with both procedure (3).