Like many of you, I chose to be a nurse because I wanted to serve people during their most vulnerable times, knowing that this work would make a difference. Working with people at their most vulnerable has taught me a lot, including that my patients can be braver, kinder, more frightened, angrier, disappointed, lovelier, and in general more surprising than I expect when I walk in the door.
A growing and perhaps surprising population at disproportionally high risk for heart attacks are individuals who identify as transgender. Transgender individuals are those whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. People identifying as transgender can be any age or race, from any background, and reside in all 50 states. In 2016 there were approximately 1.4 million people in the United States who identified as transgender. Given the increase in the transgender population, new initiatives are attempting to understand the unique health needs of this population in order to provide high-quality health care. Little is known about the cardiovascular health of this population, which prompted a recent study by Dr. Alzahrani from George Washington University who found that the transgender population had a higher reported history of heart attacks compared with the cisgender (those whose gender corresponds with their birth sex) population.
This first-of-its-kind study examined approximately 720,000 U.S. adults who completed the telephone-based Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between the years of 2014-2017. Of these, 3,055 adults identified as transgender. In gender stratified analyses, Dr. Alzahrani and colleagues found that after adjusting for known cardiovascular risk factors transgender men had (i.e. they were told by a doctor, nurse or health care professional that they had a heart attack) compared to cisgender men and women. And transgender women had a 2-fold increase in the rate of heart attacks compared with cisgender women. Importantly, the investigators also found that transgender men and women were more likely to smoke and be sedentary, and that these and other traditional risk factors were associated with increased odds of experiencing a heart attack. This suggests that while there are about the long-term cardiovascular risk of gender affirming-hormones, mitigating these traditional risk factors are important first line targets for this and all populations.
In an accompanying editorial Dr. Paul Chan evoked Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, citing the narrator “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Dr. Chan states that today transgender individuals are invisible. But they don’t have to be. We have to actively reject any implicit or explicit expectations we have about this population and simply see them and treat them as they present. This sentiment is echoed by Dr. Billy Carceres, Nurse and Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia University Program for Study of LGBT health, “There’s this perception that we can spot transgender people; but if we don’t ask the question about gender identity we might be missing out on people who are at risk. Patients want to have conversations with health care providers about things that influence their health.”
Table 1 lists several steps that can help us start to have these conversations. Adopting such steps in our clinical practice and research are critical against the backdrop of the increased social stress, poor socioeconomic status, health disparities, violence, and a perpetuating fear of mistreatment by healthcare professionals experienced by transgender populations. These steps will help us to see this invisible population, gain their trust, and ultimately help engage them in activities to improve their cardiovascular health.
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Table 1. Steps to Reducing Cardiovascular Risk in Transgender Populations |
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While Dr. Alzahrani’s new article highlights a significant disparity in an often overlooked and vulnerable population, ultimately we need a lot more data before we can develop and tailor cardiovascular treatment guidelines for transgender populations. As Dr. Sangyoon Shin, Medical Director of Co-Management Service for Gender Affirmation Surgery of Mount Sinai stated, “Its important to realize that the transgender population has specialized needs because they are more marginalized and face high rates of discrimination; But the health care practices the guidelines geared towards them need to be just as evidence-based as with any other population.“ Anything less would be a disservice.
People who seek out a health care provider – a nurse, physician, physical therapist, or pharmacist – do so because they need our help. Our job is to serve them, all of them, as they are, with high quality evidence-based health care. How we treat invisible populations, no matter how different or perplexing they are to us, is the true mark of our professionalism.