You probably never think about whether the surgeon who is operating on you is a man or a woman. And back in the day, people might have preferred a man. Well, you definitely shouldn’t do the latter: women turn out to be better surgeons, conclude Canadian scientists after comparing the health of patients after surgery by a man or woman.
“We have studied the impact of surgeon socio-cultural characteristics on the quality of treatment and the way patients recover from surgery,” explains oncologist Christopher Wallis of the University of Toronto out talking to Scientias.nl. “In this study focused on the difference between male and female surgeons in terms of the risk of complications, premature death and unplanned readmissions. These are numbers that are important for patients, public health and healthcare in general.”
Women better
Earlier research by Wallis and his team already showed that a female surgeon on average does a better job on the operating table than a man, if you look at the short term, so up to thirty days after the operation. “Now we have asked the question of how the gender of the surgeon affects the longer term, ie after 90 days and 365 days. We looked at 25 different surgical procedures, involving all kinds of specialties. Think of general surgery, kidney surgery, operations to combat obesity, cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic operations, ENT surgery, gynecological and urological procedures and plastic surgery,” Wallis sums up.
Death, readmission and complications
The researcher explains that they were primarily looking for the joint risk of premature death, follow-up surgery due to complications from the initial surgery, the risk of readmission, and major medical complications such as heart attack, stroke, blood clots, kidney failure, or stroke. heavy infection. “Secondly, we looked for the difference between female and male surgeons in all these areas separately.”
Risk correction
The medical scientist explains that they took into account as many factors as possible when calculating the quality differences between the sexes. “It is important to consider both the relative and absolute differences. We have applied a risk adjustment to all figures. In practice, this means that we have taken into account all kinds of factors that could influence the study results, such as the age of the patient, his general health, the type of operation, the number of cases, the experience of the surgeon in question, et cetera.” says the lead researcher.
Shocking numbers
And then the numbers. There is a surprisingly large gap between the skills of male and female surgeons. “When we look at our primary results combined, patients who underwent surgery with a male surgeon were 8 percent more likely to have an adverse event 90 days after surgery,” said Wallis. “After a year, this percentage is 6 percent. There is an even greater effect when looking at deceased patients. After using the corrected models, it appears that after surgery by a male surgeon, patients run a 25 percent higher risk of dying than if a woman operated on them.”
Explanation for differences
Unfortunately, it is not possible on the basis of this study to give a complete answer to the question of where these differences come from. “But we can make some assumptions,” says Wallis. “It has long been known that there are differences between male and female doctors in the performance of their work. Among other things, when it comes to the amount of time they spend with patients, the way they communicate and the extent to which they comply with the guidelines. These factors may well contribute to the firm conclusions of our study. We are currently investigating this phenomenon further.”
In addition, there are also factors that probably have little influence on the results. “There are also things that are very unlikely to contribute to the quality difference between male and female surgeons. For example, we think that the difference is not in the technical knowledge of the surgeons. We should probably look more at the angle of decision-making, the way the surgeons work and the communication between doctor and patient.”
Important lessons
The Canadian researcher thinks there are many lessons to be learned from his research. “As a male surgeon, I think it’s important to reflect on the results and think about what might be behind these differences. Anyway, I did this and I advise my male colleagues to do the same. Men and women operate and communicate in different ways. Hopefully, our study will provoke introspection among my male colleagues and a broader professional and societal discussion on this topic. Finally, I hope that there will be follow-up research that will shed more light on the underlying causes of these differences. All this can significantly improve the medical care of doctors for their patients,” concludes Wallis.
2023-09-02 09:03:12
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