Does high surgeon volume reduce operative mortality in patients undergoing surgical procedures?
Surgeon volume is a key mediator of the hospital volume-mortality relationship, highlighting the importance of selecting high-volume surgeons to improve operative survival.
For many procedures, the observed associations between hospital volume and operative mortality are largely mediated by surgeon volume. Patients can often improve their chances of survival substantially, even at high-volume hospitals, by selecting surgeons who perform the operations frequently.
Birkmeyer et al. (Wed,) studied this question.