Exploring The Impact Of Gender On Intraoperative Complications During Cataract Surgery

Gender plays a significant role in the field of medicine, with growing interest in understanding its impact on patient outcomes. Research has shown that even in general surgery, gender mismatches between surgeons and patients can potentially lead to worse surgical results. Our purpose was to evaluate whether patients undergoing elective cataract surgery encounter varying intraoperative complications depending on the gender of the operating surgeon.

This is a retrospective cohort analysis of patients who underwent elective cataract surgery between 2012 and 2021 in one tertiary medical center.

This is a retrospective, observational study. We manually reviewed all surgical reports of elective cataract surgery in our center for 10 years. We included only surgeries that utilized phacoemulsification. We excluded combined surgeries with another surgical procedure. We classified all reports to uneventful or eventful surgery. Then, we subdivided all eventful cases by the type of intraoperative complications. Intraoperative complications included: corneal chemical burn, Descemet membrane detachment, anterior capsular rupture, IFIS, posterior capsular rupture, vitreous_loss, nucleus drop, IOL tear, zonulolysis, phacodonesis, iridodyalysis, CTR/CTS placement, retrobulbar hemorrhage, expulsive suprachoroidal hemorrhage.

A total of 14,825 surgical reports by 46 surgeons were reviewed. A 6.59% (n=978) intraoperative complication rate was found. The most common intraoperative complication was posterior capsule rapture (2.13%), followed by vitreous loss (2.03%) intraoperative floppy iris syndrome (1.6%), zonulolysis (0.91%) and anterior capsular rupture (1.39%). We did not find a statistical difference in the rate of any intraoperative complications between male surgeons (6.62%) and female surgeons (6.54%). Over the years, we have observed a significant decline in the risk of overall intraoperative complications at our center.

In our study, we found no notable statistical variance in intraoperative complication rates for standard cataract surgery when comparing male and female surgeons. These results could strengthen our comprehension of the gender influence within the field of cataract surgery.