For those of you with short attention spans, let me cut to the chase: Older surgeons have lower mortality rates, and WOMEN SURGEONS 50-59 HAVE THE LOWEST RATES OF EVERYONE.
This is a banner moment for me, as I am *ahem* a woman in that group.
So the study. This was in the British Medical Journal 2018, “Age and sex of surgeons and mortality of older surgical patients: observational study.”
Study:
- 892,187 patients
- 45,826 surgeons were included. They were evaluated looking at surgeon operative volume, patient illness severity stratification, elective vs nonelective surgery. They reanalyzed the data for older surgeons, thinking they may operate less frequently so therefore their rates would be lower. They looked years in practice, as that may not correlate with age directly (were you 30 when you started? 35? 40?)
Findings:
- Patients’ mortality was lower for older surgeons than for younger surgeons: the adjusted operative mortality rates were 6.6% for surgeons under age 40 to 6.3% for surgeons 60 years or over.
- There was no evidence that adjusted operative mortality betweenfemale versus male surgeons (adjusted mortality 6.3% for female surgeons versus 6.5% for male surgeons;).
- After stratification by sex of surgeon, patients’ mortality declined with age of surgeon for both male and female surgeons
My favorite conclusions of theirs?
Female surgeons aged 50-59 years having the lowest operative mortality across all groups. This was a big study, with big numbers. It is nice to know experience matters. It also echoes a JAMA study HERE which showed lower complications for women having surgery with a woman surgeon.
The differences are small, but love to see this. You go girls. #ilooklikeasurgeon #surgeonmoms