Female patients more likely to die if surgeon is male, study finds

Females who are operated on by a male surgeon are much more likely to die, experience complications and be readmitted to hospital than when a woman performs the procedure, research reveals. 

According to a study, women are 15% more likely to suffer adverse post-operative outcomes and 32% more likely to die when their surgery is conducted by a male surgeon rather than a female. 

On the contrary, when women surgeons operated on men, the research found male patients had the same outcomes, regardless of the gender of the person performing the surgery. 

The study was conducted by a team at the University of Toronto, involved analyzing the data of 1.3 million patients between 2007 and 2019. 

The study’s co-author and associate professor and epidemiologist Dr Angela Jerath stated, “This result has real-world medical consequences for female patients and manifests itself in more complications, readmissions to hospital and death for females compared with males”.

He further added, “We have demonstrated in our paper that we are failing some female patients and that some are unnecessarily falling through the cracks with adverse, and sometimes fatal, consequences”.

The research paper was published in the medical journal JAMA Surgery – found that “sex discordance between surgeon and patient was associated with a significant increased likelihood of composite adverse post-operative outcomes.

In accompanying commentary on the study, Dr Andrea Riner, from the University Of Florida College Of Medicine, said the findings “sound the alarm for urgent action”.

“Although the underlying reasons for this disparity are not fully understood, action should be taken immediately,” she added.