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Despite concerted efforts to encourage female medical students in pursuing interventional radiology (IR) integrated residency, women remain a minority of such trainees since the residency's inception. Similar phenomena have been observed in older integrated surgical and radiological specialties, though gender differences between these subspecialties have not been elucidated. Thus, our study aims to quantify changes in female IR representation over a five-year period from the 2018 to 2022 match cycles and compare with trends in other specialties where women residents are underrepresented. Data on sex distribution of active trainees were obtained from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports on Graduate Medical Education for the 2018 through 2022 academic years. Eight specialties were included in the analysis, either due to their program's similarities with IR training or due to less than 30% female representation based on the 2018 match cycle. IR was compared with diagnostic radiology (DR), vascular surgery-integrated (VS), thoracic surgery-integrated (TS), orthopedic surgery (OS), urology, neurosurgery (NS), and radiation oncology (RO). During the five-year period, all specialties experienced an upward trend in the percentage of women represented in their programs. As of the 2022-2023 academic year, women comprised 22.39% of IR-integrated programs, up from 19.20% in 2018. On average between 2018-2023, there was a + 3.99% yearly change in the percentage of female residents in IR-integrated programs. Between 2018-2023, compared to DR, VS, TS, RO, and urology, IR had a significantly lower average percent representation of women in integrated residency programs (U = 25, p< 0.05), but compared to OS, IR had a significantly higher average percent representation of women in integrated residency programs (U = 17, p< 0.05). Between 2018-2023, compared to NS, IR had a similar average percent representation of women in integrated residency programs (U= 10, p = 0.69). Despite observed positive growth in women representation, IR's female representation lags behind other procedurally heavy or radiological program counterparts. This quantitative analysis emphasizes the need for continued attention during recruitment to identify and attract female medical student talent in order achieve IR resident gender parity. Bolstering known successful initiatives such as female mentorship programs and focused recruitment as well as developing new ways to support female interest in IR should be an important priority for the field.
Hunt et al. (Wed,) studied this question.