Female Anesthesia Providers Improve Surgical Safety

TOPLINE:

Patients who receive care from female anesthesia providers, especially non-trainees, experience fewer complications during surgery, a new study found.

METHODOLOGY:

• In this retrospective cohort study, the researchers assessed 364,429 patients who underwent surgery between 2008 and 2022 at two centers in the United States.
• A total of 900 anesthesia providers (511 men [56.8%] and 389 women [43.2%]) treated 179,259 (49.2%) and 185,170 (50.8%) patients, respectively.
• The primary outcome was complications during surgery (hypotension and hypoxemia).
• The secondary outcomes included complications within 30 days of surgery, readmission to the hospital, and mortality.

TAKEAWAY:

• Patients in the study had a 4% lower risk of experiencing respiratory complications during surgery when their anesthesia provider was a woman (adjusted risk difference, −4%; 95% CI, −0.6% to −0.2%).
• However, the risk for complications was slightly higher when the provider was a female trainee vs a male trainee (0.5%; P = .001).
• The researchers found no significant association between the sex of the provider and adverse postoperative complications, readmission, or mortality within 30 days of a procedure.

IN PRACTICE:

“This study demonstrates an association of female anesthesia provider sex with a lower risk of intraoperative complications that is magnified among non-trainees. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings in other geographical areas and health systems and to elucidate underlying mechanisms,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Dario von Wedel, MD, of the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. It was published online on June 25, 2024, in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

LIMITATIONS: 

Due to the study’s observational design, the researchers could not establish causality, and unmeasured confounding variables may have influenced the results. The data were limited to two academic healthcare networks in the United States, which may affect generalizability. The higher proportion of female-certified registered nurse anesthetists may have introduced bias. The study did not account for gender identity.

DISCLOSURES:

Philanthropic donors Jeffrey and Judith Buzen supported this study. Four authors declared having financial ties outside this work. Others declared that they had no competing interests.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.