Knee Replacements Surgery Discrimination

Dr. O'Connor introduces herself and shares if doctors discriminate against women getting knee replacements.

Empowher Dr. Mary O’Connor, M.D. Chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery I am a practicing Orthopedic Surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. I’m Chair of our Department there my practice focuses on hip and knee surgery primarily joint replacement surgery and I also take care of bone tumors. Do doctors discriminate when it comes to women and knee replacements?] You know, there are some very concerning data that has just come out in the study regarding that, and this is a subject that’s really near and dear to my heart, and we have known for some time that there is discrepancy in utilization of hip and knee replacement surgery. We have very solid data that says that women don’t undergo hip and knee replacement surgery as often as men, even though they would also benefit from the surgery. So there was a study that was undertaken in Canada trying to understand more of these factors that would contribute to why women who would benefit from surgery aren’t having surgery, and they had a very interesting finding where, patients with moderate arthritis were more likely to be recommended knee replacement surgery if they were male than if they were female. So that raises some concern about whether there are some unconscious bias on the part of the doctor in terms of recommending surgery.