Surgeon/Patient mismatch


Association of Surgeon-Patient Sex Concordance With Postoperative Outcomes

https://tinyurl.com/yvsywx4k

 

         Sometimes research is astonishing. This study, which looks at the outcomes after surgery for women who have a male surgeon, is one such. Outcomes for those women are worse than for similar operations performed by female surgeons.

         Data was obtained from a large number of patients (more than 1 million), who had one of the common surgical procedures during the period 2007-2019. Of those patients, about half had surgeons of the opposite sex. Criteria for adverse results from surgery included death, readmission, or complication within a 30-day period following the surgery.

         Results from the data analysis show significantly increased risk of death or complication for those women who had a male surgeon. Interestingly there was no increased risk for men treated by female surgeons. As the authors say,  “Further work should seek to understand the underlying mechanism”.




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