Do female surgeons do a better job than male surgeons? This is the question posed by two studies published this Wednesday in the medical journal ever (Journal of the American Medical Association). They show that people operated on by a woman experience fewer complications after surgery than those operated on by a man.
For the first time, researchers studied the medical data of 1.1 million patients who underwent surgery in Ontario, Canada. These surgeries, urgent or not, were performed between 2007 and 2019. 151,054 of these patients were operated on by a woman and 1,014,657 by a man.
More complications in male patients
13.9% of those operated on by men had complications at 90 days, compared to 12.5% of those operated on by women. One year after the operation, the difference reaches 25% for people operated on by a surgeon, compared to 20.7% for those operated on by a female surgeon. These complications can be minor infections, but also heart attacks or strokes.
The study authors conclude that even when “patient, procedure, surgeon, anesthesiologist, and hospital characteristics are taken into account, the results of this cohort study suggest that patients treated with female surgeons have lower outcome rates.” Negative postoperative outcomes, including death, at 90 days and 1 year after surgery, compared with those treated by male surgeons. They call for “further studies of the underlying causes and possible solutions” to this finding.
Another study comes to a similar conclusion.
The second study published Wednesday in ever address these possible causes. The researchers analyzed the results of operations on 150,509 patients operated on by 2,553 surgeons in Sweden, between 2006 and 2019. The sample referred to a specific surgery: cholecystectomy, that is, removal of the gallbladder, performed for hepatic colic or inflammation of the gallbladder for example.
L’étude a notamment found that complications during surgery (abcès, saignements, perforations…) étaient plus courantes chez les patients opérés par des hommes (4.3% of ces opérations, against 3.3% pour celles effectuées par women).
Slower operations for women
One explanation for this difference is that women trade more slowly than men, which may be a sign of caution, according to this study. The difference is almost 8 minutes on average, all surgeries (urgent or not) combined.
“Men and women differ in the way they practice medicine. Adopting some practices that are more common among female doctors is likely to improve outcomes for my patients,” she said. guardian the surgeon who led the first study, Christopher Wallis.
“As a surgeon, I think these data should encourage me and my colleagues to reflect on the causes of this situation,” he said.
Surgical specialties are becoming increasingly feminized, but women remain largely in the minority. In France, for example, according to a report published in 2020 by the National Council of the French Medical Order, the proportion of women among surgical specialists increased from 22.8% to 31.3% between 2010 and 2020. Of all Physicians in regular activity, Women represented 49% of the workforce in 2020.
Source: BFM TV
