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Created January 12, 2022, last updated over 2 years ago.
Collection: 147, Score: 708, Trend score: 0, Read count: 946, Articles count: 8, Created: 2022-01-12 05:34:48 UTC. Updated: 2022-01-17 05:09:59 UTC.Notes
File under correlation-is-not-causation-but...
Sometimes even correlations are too significant and important to just be fobbed off by epidemiological cliché. This collection contains articles repeatedly showing association between doctor characteristics, particularly gender, and patient outcome.
Although most recently shown by Wallis in JAMA Surgery (2021), gender-outcome associations are depressingly not new.
- Female patients treated by male surgeons more commonly experience post-operative complications and death than when treated by female surgeons. (Wallis 2021)
- Care from male surgeons and/or anaesthesiologists is associated with longer lengths of stay after cardiac surgery. (Sun 2021)
- Female heart-attack patients are less likely to survive when treated by a male physician than a female physician. (Greenwood 2018)
- Treatment from female surgeons is associated with a lower 30 day mortality than the same from male surgeons. (Wallis 2017)
- In-patient care from a female physician is associated with lower 30 day mortality and readmission rate among elderly patients. (Tsugawa 2017)
The cause of this gender outcome disparity is unclear, and importantly these studies are hypothesis forming, rather than proving. Nonetheless both Wallis (2021) and Greenwood (2018) hint at causes, namely a lack of experience treating female patients for some male doctors, and consequential lesser understanding of gender-disease differences.
The temptation when attempting to understand this is to descend into medical gender essentialism – ironically, probably a contributor to the actual outcome disparities.
A similar doctor-outcome disparity is seen with age. Among physicians, care from older doctors was associated with worse outcomes (Tsugawa 2017), yet for surgeons older age conferred better outcomes (Tsugawa 2018; Satkunasivam 2020). Causes here are possibly a nexus between experience, up-to-date knowledge and work volume – but also, still unclear.
Daniel Jolley
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Collected Articles
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Female patients treated by male surgeons more commonly experience post-operative complications and death than when treated by female surgeons.
pearl -
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. · Aug 2018
Multicenter StudyPatient-physician gender concordance and increased mortality among female heart attack patients.
Female heart-attack patients are less likely to survive when treated by a male physician than a female physician.
pearl -
Care from male surgeons and/or anaesthesiologists is associated with longer lengths of stay after cardiac surgery.
pearl -
Multicenter Study
Relation between surgeon age and postoperative outcomes: a population-based cohort study.
Increasing surgeon age is almost linearly associated with decreases in patient death, readmission & post-operative complications.
pearl -
Observational Study
Physician age and outcomes in elderly patients in hospital in the US: observational study.
Patients treated by older physicians experience higher 30-day mortality than with younger physicians.
pearl -
Observational Study
Age and sex of surgeons and mortality of older surgical patients: observational study.
Patient post-operative mortality was lowest for those treated by older surgeons.
pearl -
JAMA internal medicine · Feb 2017
Comparative StudyComparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians.
In-patient care from a female physician is associated with lower 30 day mortality and readmission rate among elderly patients.
pearl