Do male and female general practitioners differently prescribe chronic pain drugs to older patients?

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify the relationship between general practitioner (GP) gender and prescribing practice of chronic pain drugs in older adults.

Design: Cross-sectional observational study.

Setting: GPs in private practice throughout France.

Subjects: Two hundred and sixty GPs (80.8% male and 19.2% female) enrolled 1,379 (28.4% male and 71.6% female) noninstitutionalized patients over 65 years of age, suffering from chronic pain.

Methods: A comparison of prescribing habits between male and female GPs was performed on baseline data with univariate analyses followed by multivariate analyses after taking several confounding factors into account.

Results: No significant differences were found when comparing male and female GPs' prescriptions of World Health Organization step 1, step 2, and step 3 analgesics. Male GPs were more likely than female GPs to prescribe antineuropathic pain drugs (11.3% of patients with male GPs versus 4.8% of patients with female GPs, P = 0.004) and less likely to prescribe symptomatic slow-acting drugs for osteoarthritis (SySADOA) (10.2% of male GPs' patients versus 18.8% of female GPs' patients, P = 0.0003). After adjusting for several confounding factors, male GPs were still more likely to prescribe antineuropathic pain drugs (OR 2.43, 95% CI 1.15-5.14, P = 0.02) and less likely to prescribe symptomatic slow-acting drugs (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.42-0.97, P = 0.03).

Conclusion: Male and female GPs prescribe analgesics in a similar manner. However, male GPs prescribe more antineuropathic pain drugs, but fewer SySADOA.