Middle aged surgeons are safest

When it comes to choosing a safe pair of hands for your operation, it seems that surgeons in the middle of their career are the best bet, according to a new survey.

Medics reach their peak of reliability after around 10 years' of experience - typically in the 35 to 50 age range.

The survey, by a team at University of Lyon in France, looked at the association between surgeons’ experience and post-operative complications in thyroid surgery.

Although only a small number of surgeons were involved in the study (28 spread over 5 hospitals), between them they carried out over 3,500 thyroidectomies in the year reviewed (a thyroidectomy involves the removal of the thyroid gland).

Led by Dr Antoine Duclos and Dr Jean-Christophe Lifante, the team were on the look out for two major complications of  thyroid surgery - permanent recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy (severe hoarseness) and hypoparathyroidism (damage to the parathyroid glands leading to low calcium levels, cramping and twitching) at intervals of 48 hours after the operation and then again after 6 months.

This showed that patients were at higher risk of permanent complication if the surgeon was inexperienced  - and surprisingly also if they had more than 20 years' experience.

Surgeons between 35 and 50 years old (that is, with 5-20 years of practice since graduation) had better outcomes than their younger or older colleagues. 

Other factors could explain part of this variation according to the researchers, who called for further investigation.

The survey is published on BMJ.com.

This article was published on Wed 11 January 2012