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Surgeons at higher risk of cancer, study shows
Last reviewed: 09.08.2025
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have found that U.S. surgeons have a cancer death rate more than twice that of non-surgeons and about 20 percent higher than most non-physician workers. Although surgeons still have a lower overall death rate than other occupations, the unexpectedly high cancer death rate may shed light on occupational risks.
In the study, "Mortality Among Surgeons in the United States," published in JAMA Surgery, researchers analyzed available population-level data to estimate rates and leading causes of mortality among surgeons.
The researchers examined death records for 1,080,298 people aged 25 to 74 years old extracted from the National Vital Statistics System for 2023, including data on 224 surgeons and 2,740 other physicians.
Age, sex, underlying cause of death, and usual occupation were obtained from medical death certificate records. Population sizes for calculating rates were taken from the 2023 American Community Survey and cross-checked with the AMA Physician Masterfile.
Comparison groups included physicians who were not surgeons, other professionals (lawyers, engineers, scientists), and all other workers. The researchers calculated death rates per 100,000 population, standardized for age and sex to the 2000 U.S. standard population, and calculated mortality rate ratios (MRRs).
Surgeons had 355.3 deaths per 100,000 compared to 228.4 per 100,000 for non-surgeons, giving an MRR of 1.56. The mortality rate for surgeons remains significantly lower than for all other workers (632.5 per 100,000) and similar to the rates for lawyers, engineers, and scientists, which are 404.5 (MRR 0.88).
Non-surgeons had the lowest risk of dying in a car accident, at 3.4 per 100,000. Surgeons had a significantly higher rate, at 13.4 per 100,000, making it the fourth most common cause of death in their group, compared with the ninth most common cause of death among all other groups.
This higher ranking does not mean that surgeons are more likely to have driving accidents. In fact, they have fewer deaths per 100,000 in this category than all other worker groups (13.4 vs. 16.6). Rather, it reflects a redistribution of rankings due to lower rates of deaths from causes more common in other groups.
For example, the fourth most common cause of death among all other workers is respiratory diseases, at 27 per 100,000, while among surgeons it is 14th with 0.6 per 100,000, making them the least vulnerable group. Other physicians had a rate three times higher than surgeons, at 1.8 per 100,000.
Surgeons were also the least likely to die from influenza, kidney disease, liver disease, septicemia, and diabetes. The diabetes mortality rate among surgeons was exceptionally low, at 1.6 per 100,000 (ranked 11th among causes), compared to 23.8 for all other workers (ranked 5th) and 6.9 for other physicians (ranked 6th).
A major outlier is seen when comparing cancer mortality. The neoplastic mortality rate for surgeons was 193.2 per 100,000 compared with 87.5 for non-surgeons, for an MRR of 2.21. Cancer was the only category in which surgeons had a higher mortality rate than all other workers (162.0 per 100,000).
The authors assume that surgeons and non-surgical physicians have similar health knowledge and resources. If the excess 105.7 cancer deaths per 100,000 were excluded, the mortality rates among surgeons and other physicians would equalize, suggesting that factors specific to surgeons' work environments may contribute to the excess cancer deaths.