Yee LM, et al. - A retrospective cohort study was conducted to determine whether there were differences in obstetric interventions or outcomes by the gender of the delivering physician. It was noted that outcomes of nulliparous women undergoing a trial of labor did not vary by delivering physician gender.

Methods

• Participants in the study were all nulliparous women delivering singleton, vertex, live births at 37 weeks of gestation or greater at a tertiary care institution from 2014 to 2015.
• By delivering physician gender, patient clinical characteristics were analyzed.
• Delivery mode and episiotomy were the primary outcomes.
• Major perineal laceration, postpartum hemorrhage, 5-minute Apgar score less than 7, cord umbilical artery pH less than 7.0, and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit admission were the included secondary outcomes.
• For analyses, univariable and hierarchical multivariable analyses including physician as a random effect were utilized.

Results

• According to the findings obtained, out of the 7,027 women who met inclusion criteria, 81.3% (n=5,716) were delivered by a female physician.
• It was observed that women delivered by female physicians were slightly younger than those delivered by male physicians and were more likely to be publicly insured (11.7% vs 7.1%, P < .001).
• Mode of delivery did not vary by physician gender.
• It was noted that the cesarean delivery rate was 20.6% for male physicians and 20.5% for female physicians (P=.61).
• Data reported that although the episiotomy rate did vary by physician gender, with 5.9% of subjects delivered by male physicians undergoing episiotomy compared with 3.6% of subjects delivered by female physicians (P=.001), this finding did not persist in the multivariable model after accounting for potential confounders (adjusted odds ratio 0.87, 95% CI 0.49–1.56).
• In univariable or multivariable analyses, there were no differences by physician gender regarding any of the examined secondary outcomes.