Female Representation Among Head and Neck Surgical Oncology Publications.

Abstract

There is lower female representation within academic medicine. We aimed to investigate female authorship (FA) and female-held chair or program director (PD) positions within head and neck oncology (HNO). Articles authored by females about microvascular and reconstructive surgery (MRS) and transoral robotic surgery (TORS) were identified. A sub-analysis was performed by investigating the gender of HNO fellows, PDs, and chairpersons. These were collected, and FA reported. There were 1227 publications, 656 on MRS and 567 on TORS. Females authored 299 (24%) publications, 139 (23%) about MRS and 160 (30%) about TORS. There was no significant increase in FA or fellowship trends over time (p > 0.05). In our sub-analysis, we identified four HNO chairwomen (3%), and eight (6%) female HNO PDs. HNO chairwomen authored an average of 97 publications, PDs authored 37. FA in MRS and TORS remained stable between 2001 and 2022. Although few HNO females hold program chair or PD positions they perform quality research and serve as senior authors on a large proportion of publications.