Association of Surgeons' Male or Female Gender and Urgent/Emergent Add-on Cases Wait Time: A Multicentric Hospital Registry Trial

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate whether wait times for urgent or emergent operations cases differ between female and male attending surgeons. Summary Background Data: Patients treated by female surgeons experience lower complication rates compared to those treated by male surgeons. The impact of surgeon gender on wait times remains underexplored. Methods: Adults undergoing non-cardiac operation scheduled after operating room schedule was finalized at two academic healthcare networks in the Bronx, NY, and Boston, MA, between 2014-2021 were included. We tested the hypothesis that female surgeon is associated with shorter wait times for urgent and emergent surgery. Secondary endpoints were hospital length of stay (HLOS) and postoperative Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission. Results: 32,903 surgical add-on cases were performed by 307 female and 433 male surgeons. The median add-on time was 261 minutes and 489 minutes, respectively. Female surgeons, compared with male surgeons, had shorter add-on times for urgent and emergent operation, with an absolute difference of -28.3 minutes (95% confidence interval [CI], -46.9 to -9.7; P=0.003) and -31.8 minutes (95%CI, -42.7 to -20.9; P<0.001), respectively. In urgent and emergent cases, patients treated by female surgeon had a shorter postoperative hospital length of stay (adjusted incidence rate ratio, 0.95; 95%CI, 0.91 to 0.99; P=0.01) with non-significant different in ICU admission rate (adjusted incident rate ratio, 0.83; 95%CI, 0.67 to 1.03; P=0.09). Conclusions: Female surgeons get their non-elective operations started faster. The effect was magnified in emergent cases. Patients treated by female surgeons had a shorter hospital length of stay.