A poor outcome of the operation is more likely if the patient is a woman and the surgeon is a man

0

You don't always get to choose who operates on you, especially in emergencies, but the gender of your surgeon doesn't matter, does it? It's possible, according to a Canadian study of 1.3 million people.

It reports that women who underwent routine elective or emergency surgeries with male surgeons were 15% more likely to die, have serious complications and/or be re-hospitalized within 30 days than if a woman had the surgery.

In contrast, the study found that men had equally good outcomes regardless of the gender of the surgeon.

Exactly why this “gender discrepancy” exists is not fully understood, and the study was not designed to answer this question.

“We hypothesize, based on previous work related to patient-physician communication, that this may reinforce the observation,” said study author Dr. Christopher Wallis, associate professor of urology at Mount Sinai Hospital and University Health Network in Toronto.

Previous research has shown that female doctors tend to listen more, and their patients can feel better as a result.

“Patients should look for surgeons they trust and have a good relationship with,” Wallis said. “As a surgical community, we must strive to better understand the factors underlying these observations so that we can understand the processes of care that lead to optimal outcomes so that all surgeons can use them and all patients can benefit.”