Surgeon's age is not necessarily important in patient outcome

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Surgical volume is more important than the surgeon's age when it comes to the outcome of an operation for a patient.
When choosing a surgeon to operate on you, should their age be a consideration? An older surgeon has more experience, but may suffer from failing eyesight and impaired co-ordination or other problems that impact his or her performance. Researchers at the University of Michigan now report a survey that shows the effect of a surgeon's age on patient outcome following an operation.

They looked at a total of 460,738 patients undergoing one of eight procedures such as heart bypass and aortic valve replacement - chosen because they are commonly performed. For complex heart and cancer surgeries, surgeons older than 60 with low surgical volumes had higher mortality rates among their patients than their younger counterparts. But those older surgeons who continued with a high surgical volume had comparable outcomes to their peers aged 41 to 50.

The study also dispels the common belief that the younger, less experienced surgeon gets poorer results. Those aged 40 or less proved to have similar success rates to their older more experienced peers. Therefore, patients should be more concerned with surgical volume rather than their surgeon's age when making choices about operations.

Source
Annals of Surgery September 2006