The career lifespan of a neurosurgeon is a challenging concept to quantify but, in this issue, we have attempted to calculate this. With the aid of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons membership team, we have been able to gather information about some milestones in a neurosurgeon’s career.
As such, we defined the career start as the timepoint at which FAANS certification was obtained; career end was defined as the transition of membership from Active to Lifetime Status. Out of 16,224 members, 9907 members had data regarding their FAANS status and time of transition from Active to Lifetime membership. For the 9,907 members that had data for each of these career lifespan timepoints, the average age of achieving FAANS status was 39.0 years and lifetime membership was conferred at 64.8 years.
When the data is stratified according to gender, differences are noted. For the 841 female neurosurgeons, the age of FAANS certification was 40.1 years; for males, it was 38.9 years. Female neurosurgeons transitioned to a Lifetime membership at 60.1 years old; male neurosurgeons transitioned at 64.9 years.
Using this data, we can approximate the general career lifespan of an average neurosurgeon in the U.S. at 25.8 years.
