Looks uncommon, but as per a research study this might be a possibility. A December 2021 research study published in the JAMA Surgery found that in 50% of the surgeries where female patients were operated by a male surgeon, unfavorable outcomes (surgical complications, readmissions to the hospital, or death) occurred within 30 days of surgery.
"Unsurprisingly, most of the sex-discordant surgeon-patient dyads were male surgeons and female patients. What is surprising and troubling is that negative outcomes, including complications and death, were linked to sex discordance. Unfortunately, this association disproportionately affected female patients," says the research study which took information from more than 1.3 million adults and over 3,000 surgeons on surgeries like knee and hip replacements and spinal surgeries.
A similar observation was found by a 2017 study. "Patients treated by female surgeons had a small but statistically significant decrease in 30 day mortality and similar surgical outcomes (length of stay, complications, and readmission), compared with those treated by male surgeons," it said and added that there was an association between improved 30 day postoperative outcomes and female surgeons.
What can be the possible reason behind it?
Is it likely that the nature of the surgeon differs between male and female surgeons?
The occurrence of unfavorable outcomes in male and female patients when a surgery is done by a female surgeon is 4% and 7% respectively whereas in case of male surgeon this occurrence is more than 39% in both the genders of patients.
"We found that improved postoperative outcomes for patients treated by female surgeons were restricted to patients who had elective operations, which might reflect better patient selection for surgery or residual confounding," says one of the studies and adds that other possible explanations include a willingness to collaborate by female surgeons. Elective surgeries do not involve medical emergencies; these surgeries are scheduled in advance.
This apart, there are several studies that have shed light that female medical staff tend to patients better than male staff.
So, do we have enough “good” surgeons?
Sadly no. Surgery has mostly remained a male dominated profession. As per a report only 700 of 25,000 Indian surgeons are women.
As per a 2016 news report, "rough estimates suggest that only 10% of the total population of surgeons associated with corporate hospitals in the city are women, most of them confined to the gynaecology and obstetrics departments."
"This disparity, according to industry observers, is most evident in the super-specialty branches: cardio-thoracic surgery, oncology, urology, paediatrics, plastic surgery, neurology or even gastroenterology.Finding a woman surgeon in any of these fields, they confess, is almost like looking for a needle in a haystack," the report adds.
