At what age are surgeons safest?

At what age are surgeons safest? In France, according to Antoine Duclos and colleagues, it’s between 35 and 50 years old (doi:10.1136/bmj.d8041). The authors looked prospectively at thyroid operations performed in five high volume centres and found an increased risk of permanent complications when operations were done by less experienced surgeons and those in practice for more than 20 years. This finding has a certain face validity, but the authors recommend caution in interpreting their results. They looked at only one type of operation and used a cross sectional study design. Future research might follow a cohort of surgeons to see how performance changes during a surgeon’s career, they say. Supervision in the early years is an obvious response, but what should surgeons do when they reach 50?
Fiona Godlee, editor, BMJ
fgodlee@bmj.com
Cite this as: BMJ 2012;344:e971