Study suggests older surgeons produce lower mortality rates in emergency procedures

FINDINGSResearchers from UCLA and several other institutions found surgeries performed by older surgeons — age 50 and up — have lower patient mortality rates than those performed by younger surgeons, and that patient mortality rates do not differ significantly based on whether the surgeon is male or female.Broken down by age group and adjusting for various patient characteristics, mortality rates were 6.6 percent for surgeons aged 40 and younger, 6.5 percent for those 40 to 49 years old, 6.4 percent for surgeons aged 50 to 59 years, and 6.3 percent for surgeons age 60 and older.The study also showed that when comparing men and women surgeons across those four age groups, female surgeons in their 50s had the lowest patient mortality rate.BACKGROUNDThere has been limited research about how a surgeon ’s age, gender and other characteristics are correlated with patient outcomes. The researchers set out to understand whether surgeons’ skills improve with experience, and whether a loss of dexterity or less familiarity with new technologies contributed to poorer surgical outcomes for older docto rs. There also has been concern that tighter restrictions on training hours during the residencies of younger surgeons might negatively affect their skills later on.METHODThe researchers examined the medical records of 892,187 Medicare patients aged 65 to 99 who had one of 20 common types of emergency surgery between 2011 and 2014. The records incorporated procedures performed by 45,...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news