Leon Barretto

Female certified urologists, who are a minority within the field, perform a significantly higher percentage of surgery on women relative to their male colleagues, according to the study.

In particular, they perform a higher proportion of gender-neutral procedures, meaning surgeries that are not specific to men or women, on female patients than male urologists do. Fifty-four percent of patients were female for female versus 32 percent of female patients for male urologists.

For the study, investigators looked at six-month case logs of more than 6,000 certifying urologists from 2003 to 2012, which included more than 1 million cases that were either gender-neutral cases (i.e., they could be performed on either male or female patients) or gender-specific procedure groups. These data represented more than two-thirds of all urologists in the US, based on current estimates.

While there have been anecdotal reports of women preferring female urologists, this is believed to be the first study analyzing the influence of surgeon or patient gender on surgical practice patterns.

The number of female urologists is growing, but they still represent a small portion of the field. Out of about 9,600 urologists in the US, only about 8 to 12 percent are women, the study reports.

The number of female urologists did increase from 34 in 1981 to 512 in 2009, and the percentage of female urology residents rose from 5 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 2011.

Urology is, and almost always has been, the medical specialty with the largest gender gap — according to a 2015 report, roughly 92 percent of urologists are men. That tide is turning though. As more female medical students learn that urology encompasses much more than penises and prostates — and that it offers a flexible, relatively low-stress lifestyle compared to other specialties — the number of women entering the field has been increasing at never-before-seen rates.

The Gender Divide in Urology: Surgeon Gender Shapes the Clinical Landscape