What the scientists are saying…

Are female surgeons better? It’s a male dominated profession, but new research suggests that women make better surgeons than men. For the study, a team at the University of Toronto compared like for like procedures performed by 3,314 surgeons at a single Canadian hospital over an eight-year period. This revealed that the post-operative death rates for female surgeons were 12% lower than for their male counterparts – a figure that equates to one less patient dying per every 230 operations a woman performs. It’s not the first study to indicate that women make better medics: previous research has found that women doctors have, on average, slightly better outcomes than male ones, and that they are less likely to be struck off. However, the researchers say more work is needed to explain the disparity. They speculate that women are better communicators, and more cautious, than men; but it could be that women face greater obstacles in entering the profession – with the result that only the most skilled qualify as surgeons.

Epidurals don’t prolong labour It has long been received wisdom that epidurals can slow the second stage of labour, and increase chances of a forceps or ventouse delivery. NHS guidelines warn that the pain relief method can prolong labour and obstetricians often withdraw or reduce pain management in the “pushing” stage as a result. Yet a double-blind study involving 400 first-time mothers has found that epidurals have no such effect. All the participants in the study, at Harvard Medical School, received regular epidural pain medication during the first half of their labours, but once their cervixes had dilated to four inches – the sign that the second stage has begun – half were given a vsaline placebo, while the rest continued with the pain-killing drugs. On average, the first group gave birth 51 minutes later, while those who had the epidural took 52 minutes – a difference of just 3.3%. Nor was there any significant difference between the groups in the number of assisted births or in the health of the newborn babies. The only difference between the two groups was that the women who had the epidurals throughout reported experiencing less pain – which was hardly surprising. The researchers acknowledge their findings contradict previous research, and have called for follow-up studies to confirm them.

Global pesticide problem The use of neonicotinoids has already been temporarily restricted in the EU, owing to fears that the pesticides are harmful to bees, says the New Scientist. They have also been blamed for colonies collapsing in North America. But it now seems the apparent problem is more widespread than previously believed: researchers at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, tested 198 samples of honey from every continent, except Antarctica, for five common types of neonicotinoid, and found that three-quarters of them were contaminated. Moreover, in nearly half of the contaminated samples, the neonicotinoids were at levels that exceeded the minimum dose known to cause “marked detrimental effects” in pollinators. “We are talking about pesticides that are extremely toxic: something like 4,000 to 10,000 times more toxic than DDT,” said lead researcher Professor Edward Mitchell.

Blood pressure and dementia Women are 50% more likely to develop dementia than men – a disparity which has long puzzled scientists. But a US study has suggested a possible explanation: it could be because women are affected more severely by cardiovascular problems. Researchers at the University of California analysed 5,646 adults over several decades, and found that women who had hypertension (high blood pressure) were 73% more likely to develop dementia than women with healthy blood pressure; yet among men, there was no such link. Previous research has shown that women with high blood pressure are more likely than men to develop heart disease – and the researchers suspect that it may be similarly harmful to their brains. “I think this study reinforces that we really need to look at the possibility of sex-specific pathways and that risk factors don’t necessarily behave the same way in women,” said Paola Gilsanz, the paper’s lead author.