You are 15-30% more likely to die if operated on by a male surgeon

[Cattledog]

than a female surgeon.

15% male surgeon, male patient

30% male surgeon, female patient.

CBS Evening News.

[BigmanPigman]

1. Why?

[Warpy]

13. It could be arrogance feeding carelessness

or it could be just a matter of smaller hands doing finer work, something that would be even more important with smaller female patients.

I did notice over the years that female surgeons had fewer incidents with nicks and bleeding. I'm glad this study has been done and it confirms my very informal observation.

The chance of dying in surgery or within the first days post op is very small. It's not enough to reject a talented surgeon who happens to be male.

[Beakybird]

2. Maybe male surgeons are hyper confident and have less empathy for female patients.

[niyad]

10. One female anaesthesiologist said that there is a very different feel in the room

with a male or a female surgeon. A female team tends to be more collegial, more cohesive, for one thing.

None of this should surprise any of us.

[napi21]

3. It would be interesting to see how they did the calculation. There are far more male surgeons than

female, even though there has been in female Docs in recent decades. It also depends on what time frame they used.

[niyad]

7. please google and read, for example, the nyt article, which discussed and

explained one particular study at length.

[leftieNanner]

4. I only have female doctors nt

[niyad]

5. I just googled "male surgeon vs female surgeon outcomes". The results

were, to say the least, disturbing. The nyt article was first up, but all the articles and studies said pretty much the same thing. Actually, not really surprising. Women tend not to be taken seriously by the male medical profession, for one thing.

But I urge everyone to google, and read. It could mean your life.

[Shermann]

6. There are endless ways that statistic could be misleading

Are the riskier surgeries that are attempted split proportionally across the two sexes?

[UniqueUserName]

8. I'm always leary of these statistics done by analyzing other studies

You're also statistically more likely to die in a hospital. But you know why? That's because you go to a hospital when you're sick.

You're also more likely to have a car crash within 10 Mi if you're home. Well most of your driving is within 10 miles of your home.

I bet the gender gap between the number of male and female surgeons is still way out of balance. I'd have to know they had corrected for any imbalance that might be due to the sheer difference in the amounts of surgeons that are male versus female.

[TexasTowelie]

9. I believe that medical specialty & trauma level are going to influence those statistics.

Was there any mention that the survey adjusted for these factors or was it raw data that did not take into account that fatalities are more likely for patients admitted into ER than for scheduled surgeries or that firearm wounds are more fatal than gall bladder surgeries? Without the proper context raw data is meaningless.

[David__77]

11. I wonder if that model controls for surgical specialty/type.

…

[Silent Type]

12. Males try to wrap things up quickly to get to golf course.