Married men likelier to survive surgery

A team of researchers has discovered that married men are more likely to survive surgery.

The study of more than 11,500 adults who had undergone non-heart surgery was carried out. Overall, 7.6 percent of those patients died within two years of having their operation.

The study revealed that single men are a third more likely to die within two years of hospital treatment and divorcees have a 76 percent greater risk of post-surgery death than married men or widowers.

However, being married has no post-surgery effect for women.

"This is the first study to demonstrate the protective effect of marriage across a wide variety of surgical procedures," said researchers from Duke University in North Carolina.

The study appears in the Journal of Surgical Research.