Female Surgeons Get Better Results Than Male Counterparts

by Wall Street Journal

According to an analysis of two research studies published recently in JAMA Surgery, female surgeons spend more time in the operating room and their patients endure fewer postoperative complications. The sweeping reviews covered millions of procedures in Canada and Sweden. In the first study, 17 researchers in the United States and Canada followed the outcomes for approximately 1.2 million patients in Canada undergoing common surgeries between 2007 and 2020. The research team found that at both 90 days and one year post-surgery, patients treated by female surgeons were less likely to experience adverse postoperative issues, including death. "The outcome differences were modest, but consistent," the article's author writes. Even after statistically accounting for characteristics that may affect surgical outcomes, everything from patient age to surgeon experience and volume, the same conclusion was reached. A separate study published in JAMA Surgery looked at over 100,000 patients in Sweden who’d had surgery to remove their gallbladders. Female surgeons as a group were found to have longer operation times, but their patients had less invasive surgeries and shorter hospital stays.

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