This is not a new article. But when I reported on this a while back in 2021, when the article came out, I got some pushback from my male colleagues. “Really Lauren??” This is not my opinion. This was published IN JAMA. The Journal of American Medicine. They looked at 1.3 million patients in Canada who had 1 of 21 common elective surgeries. They looked at adverse outcomes, which included complications, readmission, or death within 30 days of surgery. And they found statistically significantly that women patients did better with women surgeons.
I am not trying to stir controversy.
I am just a girl. (A woman plastic surgeon for over 25 years now).
Blogging about science. (As I do with all of my blogs.)
I didn’t write this journal article. I’m sorry if it isn’t what some people want to hear. But instead of jumping on my blogging of it, and clearly I love that I am a woman surgeon, so my female patients should rejoice in this finding, we should try to figure out the WHY. Why was there a different rate?
Study:
- 1,320,108 patients were treated by 2937 surgeons
- 602,560 patients were “sex concordant” (ie male patient with male surgeon, female patient with female surgeon)
- 717,548 were sex discordant (female patient with male surgeon = 667,279? male patients with female surgeon = 50,269)
Findings?
- 14.9% had some kind of adverse postoperative event
- Sex discordance between surgeon and patient was associated with significant increased likelihood of event, death, and complication (but not readmission)
- Patient sex modified this association-WOMEN HAD WORSE OUTCOMES WHEN TREATED BY MALE SURGEONS. This was NOT true for male patients treated by female surgeons vs male patients treated by male surgeons.
They conclude?
Further work should seek to understand the underlying mechanism.
My thoughts?
It is exactly the last conclusion. This was statistically significant. The real question is why was there a difference? These are big numbers, so when doing scientific research, big numbers can elucidate things not seen by small sample size. Do women share and talk to women surgeons differently? Do women surgeons talk to women patients differently? Do women surgeons take more time in the OR or preop or follow ups? WHY was there a difference?
Super interesting. And yes, I do love it. This study, with the study showing women surgeons in their 50s *ahem* have the lowest complication rates, are the only thing making me feel good about being a woman of certain age. 🙂