The older surgeons get, the better their surgical results, according to a new American study. The best performers are aged 60 and over.
There is no reason to fear that surgeons’ abilities will decline with age. According to a news study published in the British Medical Journal, these doctors would even become more efficient with age.
Operative mortality rate
The researchers analyzed the medical histories of 892,187 patients operated by 45,826 surgeons. They considered their “operative mortality rate”, that is, whether their risk of dying during the operation and up to 30 days after the operation. Result: the operative mortality rate of patients of surgeons aged under 40 was 6.6%, while it dropped to 6.3% for surgeons aged 60 and over (6.5% for surgeons aged 40 to 49 and 6.4% for surgeons aged 50 to 59).
Female surgeons in their 50s were associated with the lowest operative mortality rate in the study. Apart from this data, the researchers did not find any differences between the operative statistics of male surgeons and those of female surgeons. In the same vein, another study conducted in Canada has just shown that patients treated by female surgeons had a slightly lower than average mortality rate.
47% of French doctors are 55 years old or over
The study was based on a sample of Americans limited to Medicare beneficiaries who had major surgery between 2011 and 2014. The patients ranged from 65 to 99 years old.
In France, 47% of doctors are 55 or over (compared to 18% of executives and higher intellectual professions) and 30% are 60 or over, according to a brand new report. study of the DREES (Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics).
The average age of French doctors (51 years) is high because the generations currently close to retirement come from the important numerus clausus of the 1970s (close to current levels, around 8,000), while the following generations have experienced lower numerus clausus (less than 4000 in the 1990s).
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