2024-04-23 15:50:23
Women may benefit from seeing a female doctor instead of a doctor for certain illnesses. Why is that? An attempt at explanation.
Would you rather go to the doctor? When faced with this question, women in particular often seem to opt for treatment based on their own gender and justify this in online forums, for example, with a better gut feeling. That gut feeling might not be such a bad guide after all.
Demonstrated lower mortality rate
Older women who are treated in hospital by a female doctor instead of a doctor have a slightly lower mortality rate for certain diseases. At least that’s what a Japanese study shows, which was published in the journal “Annals of Internal Medicine” and is based on data from more than 700,000 patients. A German expert considers the effects observed in the work to be small, but the speculations listed on the reasons for the differences are fundamentally possible.
For their study, the research group at the University of Tokyo analyzed information on patients aged 65 and older who were hospitalized between 2016 and 2019. Of the 458,000 female patients and almost 319,000 patients in this group, around 142,000 women (31.1 percent) and 97,500 men (30.6 percent) were treated by female doctors.
It found that mortality rates 30 days after hospital admission were slightly lower for women treated by female doctors. In addition, these women were less likely to have to go to the clinic again for treatment. Men, on the other hand, showed no significant differences, regardless of whether they were treated by doctors.
Women were more likely to benefit from these diseases
The result for women does not surprise Ute Seeland. The doctor, who has Germany’s first professorship for gender-sensitive medicine and prevention with a university outpatient clinic at the University of Magdeburg, points out that the effects described in the study are only small. In fact, the mortality rate for female patients was 8.15 percent when treated by a female doctor versus 8.38 percent when treated by men – a difference that was small but clinically significant, the study said.
Seeland emphasizes that a closer look is necessary here: the differences between the sexes in treatment by doctors must be viewed in relation to the disease. A corresponding breakdown in the study shows that patients who were admitted with nervous system diseases as well as diseases of the kidneys and urinary tract particularly benefited from treatment by a woman.
The reason is unclear
According to Seeland, the study design cannot answer why women benefit from treatment by female doctors. The study also cannot clarify whether women actually benefit from treatment by a female doctor or whether other associated factors play a role. However, Seeland still believes the reasons given in the work are possible.
Specifically, the study lists three possible reasons for the observed effect: On the one hand, doctors could underestimate the severity of the disease in patients. This would not only fit with the experiences that women have been sharing on X for some time under the hashtag #womenatthedoctor, but also with the results of older studies. Previous research has shown that male doctors underestimate their patients’ levels of pain, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular symptoms, and stroke risk, which could lead to delayed or incomplete care.
The male patient as the norm
A problem in this context is that women are often underrepresented in studies of diseases and medications. Because of this gap, it was not known for a long time that a heart attack can manifest itself differently in women than in men. “And heart attack is just one disease in which we see these differences,” says Ute Seeland.
In their opinion, this also explains the differences in mortality rates among women with nervous system diseases. “Dementia is more common in women than in men – with this knowledge, doctors could potentially take such diseases more seriously in their patients, as the consequences mean a longer period of suffering if women live longer than men,” speculates Seeland.
Female doctors communicate better
In addition, the treatment of dementia patients requires patience and time: “Characteristics that are stereotypically attributed to women,” says the doctor. In fact, one of the assumptions in the study is that treatment by female doctors could be associated with more effective communication and a stronger focus on patients.