Younger women historically have not fared as well as men following a heart attack but this gender gap appears to be closing, a new study says.

Coronary heart disease has steadily declined over the past four decades, but in younger adults this has slowed, possibly due to increasing heart disease risk factors, including increasing prevalence of abdominal obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure in people age 55 and younger.

But research on outcomes in this population, as well as differences in gender remains scarce, so a team of Canadian researchers decided to look at how people in this age group do following a heart attack.

They decided to evaluate contemporary data from 26 hospitals, involving more than 1,200 patients, aged between 18 and 55, who had been admitted to hospitals in the U.S., Canada and Switzerland.  The research contained information on gender differences between men and women in terms of heart attack presentation, access to care, and outcomes.

In contrast to previous research, this study found that these patients had a good one-year prognosis. While the study did find that women were overall more likely than men to be readmitted to the hospital, this was not due to cardiac reasons.

In contrast to previous research, the study found that both men and women had a 99 percent chance of survival, according to the study, which appears in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.