Women 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.

Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients.

The findings have sparked a debate about the fact that surgery in the UK remains a hugely male-dominated area of medicine and claims that “implicit sex biases” among male surgeons may help explain why women are at such greater risk when they have an operation.

“In our 1.3 million patient sample involving nearly 3,000 surgeons we found that female patients treated by male surgeons had 15% greater odds of worse outcomes than female patients treated by female surgeons,” said Dr Angela Jerath, an associate professor and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Toronto in Canada and a co-author of the findings.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/04/women-more-likely-die-operation-male-surgeon-study

That’s remarkable and disturbing.

Bubblecar said:

That’s remarkable and disturbing.

Or just perhaps statistics gone wrong. When your confidence intervals are set at 95%, as they appear to be in the paper, then shit can pop out.

Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients.

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

That’s remarkable and disturbing.

Or just perhaps statistics gone wrong. When your confidence intervals are set at 95%, as they appear to be in the paper, then shit can pop out.

Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients.

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

Bubblecar said:

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

That’s remarkable and disturbing.

Or just perhaps statistics gone wrong. When your confidence intervals are set at 95%, as they appear to be in the paper, then shit can pop out.

Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients.

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

But Is It Not All Male Surgeons

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

sibeen said:

Or just perhaps statistics gone wrong. When your confidence intervals are set at 95%, as they appear to be in the paper, then shit can pop out.

Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients.

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

You’re quite good at disregarding data you don’t like.

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

sibeen said:

Or just perhaps statistics gone wrong. When your confidence intervals are set at 95%, as they appear to be in the paper, then shit can pop out.

Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients.

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

With 1.3 million patients, it’s a big enough study to make one think that it can’t be nothing. Even the subcategories are well enough populated to be meaningful. The 95% confidence interval for the ratio of male surgeon:female surgeon adverse outcomes with a female patient was 1.10 – 1.20 with a mean of 1.15. Based on that, there’s no significant chance that there’s no correlation.

On the other hand, the survey was only based on Ontario patients and it would be interesting to see similar analyses for Australia or the UK etc. After all, there might just be something wrong with Ontario.

sarahs mum said:

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

You’re quite good at disregarding data you don’t like.

How am I disregarding data? I haven’t read the paper and it is behind a paywall. And perhaps you may have missed the second sentence of my post, “Or perhaps female surgeons really are far better operating on female patients”.

I’d be interested in whether female surgeons have better outcomes with male patients, too; this would tend to indicate that female surgeons are better overall.

btm said:

I’d be interested in whether female surgeons have better outcomes with male patients, too; this would tend to indicate that female surgeons are better overall.

According to the paper: no.

With vastly more male surgeons than female, consequently more would be senior surgeons and more likely to operate on sicker patents who are less likely to survive. Statistics can be manipulated to say almost anything.

btm said:

I’d be interested in whether female surgeons have better outcomes with male patients, too; this would tend to indicate that female surgeons are better overall.

Among 1 320 108 patients treated by 2937 surgeons, 602 560 patients were sex concordant with their surgeon (male surgeon with male patient, 509 634; female surgeon with female patient, 92 926) while 717 548 were sex discordant (male surgeon with female patient, 667 279; female surgeon with male patient, 50 269). A total of 189 390 patients (14.9%) experienced 1 or more adverse postoperative outcomes. Sex discordance between surgeon and patient was associated with a significant increased likelihood of composite adverse postoperative outcomes (adjusted odds ratio , 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04-1.09), as well as death (aOR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.02-1.13), and complications (aOR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.07-1.11) but not readmission (aOR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.98-1.07). While associations were consistent across most subgroups, patient sex significantly modified this association, with worse outcomes for female patients treated by male surgeons (compared with female patients treated by female surgeons: aOR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.10-1.20) but not male patients treated by female surgeons (compared with male patients treated by male surgeons: aOR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.95-1.03) (P for interaction = .004)

I’m sure I saw reference to a paper, or I read a paper, or something, about this topic some years ago. I think it had the same conclusion.

buffy said:

I’m sure I saw reference to a paper, or I read a paper, or something, about this topic some years ago. I think it had the same conclusion.

This is probably what I read previously (2017):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6284261/

“Comparison of postoperative outcomes among patients treated by male and female surgeons: a population based matched cohort study”

buffy said:

buffy said:

I’m sure I saw reference to a paper, or I read a paper, or something, about this topic some years ago. I think it had the same conclusion.

This is probably what I read previously (2017):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6284261/

“Comparison of postoperative outcomes among patients treated by male and female surgeons: a population based matched cohort study”

OK, it’s the same data as the 2017 study, rejigged for a different question. Same lead author.

sarahs mum said:

sibeen said:

Bubblecar said:

Either way, it’s still remarkable and disturbing.

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

You’re quite good at disregarding data you don’t like.

I don’t think it’s about “disregarding data” so much as recognizing the possibility of incomplete data.

For example, perhaps females are more susceptible over all to bad surgical outcomes ie the female patients that had bad outcomes would have had bad outcomes regardless of whether a male or female surgeon operated on them. Additionally, male surgeons perform a greater number of complex cases than their female counterparts. If male surgeons are performing most of the difficult surgeries on a population more susceptible to bad outcomes then the figures could be skewed as being discussed in this thread without suggesting that male surgeons are worse at performing operations on female patients than female surgeons are.

esselte said:

sarahs mum said:

sibeen said:

A lot of these style of papers just fade away as people delve into the figures further and find that ‘there’s nothing to see here”. Or as way more common, no-one ever does a follow up check and it becomes semi-gospel.

You’re quite good at disregarding data you don’t like.

I don’t think it’s about “disregarding data” so much as recognizing the possibility of incomplete data.

For example, perhaps females are more susceptible over all to bad surgical outcomes ie the female patients that had bad outcomes would have had bad outcomes regardless of whether a male or female surgeon operated on them. Additionally, male surgeons perform a greater number of complex cases than their female counterparts. If male surgeons are performing most of the difficult surgeries on a population more susceptible to bad outcomes then the figures could be skewed as being discussed in this thread without suggesting that male surgeons are worse at performing operations on female patients than female surgeons are.

I was going to suggest something similar.
Or perhaps women are more likely to specialise in areas such as birth and breast cancer related surgery, which have a comparatively low risk of death and have a much higher proportion of women.
Or maybe women surgeons are better on average, and both men and women have better outcomes with their own sex.
Or maybe women surgeons are much better on average when operating on women, but equal when operating on men.
Or maybe it’s age related.
Or (almost certainly) a mix of some of the above.

The other question is, how come there is just one study in one city on this?

didn’t read it all be seems likely to indicate something real, anomalous

look forward to the full study including androgynous, and transsexual surgeons etc

Possibly male surgeons are allocated the most difficult cases. In which case they’d have a higher failure rate.

But I’d just guess that female surgeons are better.

Do we need to video record medical operations?

mollwollfumble said:

Possibly male surgeons are allocated the most difficult cases. In which case they’d have a higher failure rate.

But I’d just guess that female surgeons are better.

May have to be better in a male dominated field to just be considered equal or competent by colleagues.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Do we need to video record medical operations?

Junior Mints perhaps

Cymek said:

mollwollfumble said:

Possibly male surgeons are allocated the most difficult cases. In which case they’d have a higher failure rate.

But I’d just guess that female surgeons are better.

May have to be better in a male dominated field to just be considered equal or competent by colleagues.

This is probably a fair comment.

I haven’t had many female doctors but I would coment that my present female doc is engaged. She cares about me. There isn’t the distance.

not surgery, but I wouldn’t go to a male doctor for female related issues or procedures… but don’t care the sex of the doctor for any general human body related issues.

Arts said:

not surgery, but I wouldn’t go to a male doctor for female related issues or procedures… but don’t care the sex of the doctor for any general human body related issues.

Specially not Catholic gynaes. I learnt that lesson well.

I wonder if a cheer up squad before the operation would make any difference?

sarahs mum said:

Arts said:

not surgery, but I wouldn’t go to a male doctor for female related issues or procedures… but don’t care the sex of the doctor for any general human body related issues.

Specially not Catholic gynaes. I learnt that lesson well.

Catholic male. If I have seen a female catholic gynae I didn’t walk away knowing all about it.

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

To many people touching one another, they need to wear mask, wash their hands and stop it.

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Arts said:

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Most women over there already had their faces covered.

Runs away.

Arts said:

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Mum knew.

Arts said:

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei

JudgeMental said:

Arts said:

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Mum knew.

That’s an old reference

Cymek said:

JudgeMental said:

Arts said:

who knew?

Mum knew.

That’s an old reference

from an old source.

JudgeMental said:

Arts said:

SCIENCE said:

so basically Iran got it right and so did all the other places where they segregate healthcare workers and patients according to sexGenderWtfever

who knew?

Mum knew.

How do you think she got this far?

Arts said:

JudgeMental said:

Arts said:

who knew?

Mum knew.

How do you think she got this far?

We’d be in a right pickle without her.