New Delhi, June 29: Alas, “the testicles of a bull shark” cannot be added to the old saying that a surgeon must have an eagle’s eye, a lion’s heart and a lady’s hands.

Indian researchers have busted the notion that surgeons’ testosterone levels make them braver and spunkier than other medics in a study they say was done more for fun than to unsettle surgeons.

In public perception and even in medical circles, surgeons, who need to calmly cut through human tissues and work through blood flows while they perform body repairs, have long been viewed as bolder than other doctors.

But Bangalore-based pathologist Sanjay Pai and biochemist Sweta Shivashanker have now shown that levels of testosterone — a key male sex hormone linked to aggressiveness, bravado and an appetite for risk-taking — are similar in surgeons and non-surgeons.

“We believe surgeons are gutsier — the nature of their work suggests that,” said Pai, a pathologist at Columbia Asia Referral Hospital, Bangalore. “To our surprise — and dismay — we found their testosterone levels were the same as other doctors’.”

Pai and Shivashanker have published their study in the National Medical Journal of India.

“We still don’t doubt they are braver but we don’t know why,” Pai told The Telegraph.

The research findings are surprising because several studies over the past decade have established the role of testosterone in risk-taking behaviour in animals and humans.

Two studies, as the Bangalore researchers point out in their paper, suggest that the bull shark, one of the most ferocious creatures in the wild, has the highest testosterone levels observed in the animal kingdom.

Five years ago, scientists at Harvard University demonstrated that high testosterone levels are associated with financial-risk taking behaviour.

Three years ago, a research team at Concordia University in Canada found that men with high levels of pre-natal testosterone were likelier to take greater risks in relationships, the financial market, and even on the squash court.

The Bangalore researchers measured testosterone levels in 16 surgeons and 16 non-surgeons who were coaxed to contribute 5ml blood for the study. The researchers found nearly similar average levels of the hormone — 3.0 nanograms per ml in surgeons and 2.97 nanograms per ml in non-surgeons. The highest testosterone level was found in a young non-surgeon.

“If our thesis had been proved, the phrase ‘the testicles of a bull shark’ would have been an appropriate addition (to the old saying),” Pai and Shivashanker wrote in their paper.

“Fun in medicine,” Pai said, “was an important objective of this study.”

Pai said he was disappointed because the study was aimed at testing the hypothesis that surgeons tend to take greater risks because of their higher testosterone levels.

“Equally disappointed are the surgeons among our volunteers who wished to demonstrate biochemical evidence of their machismo,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

A surgeon not connected with the study said there should be no doubt that surgeons and non-surgeons have different personalities.

“Forget about testosterone levels, the truth is out there,” said Harsha Hegde, a senior surgeon and director of medical services at the Nova Orthopaedic and Spinal Hospital, New Delhi. “Physicians could be seen as more cerebral; surgeons are technical,” Hegde said.

“A lot of what we do comes from training,” said Rana Patir, a senior neurosurgeon at Fortis Hospital in Gurgaon, Haryana. “Actually, we don’t take risks; sometimes we go to the edge but it is to achieve a long-term result. Physicians are easily able to patiently listen to and manage OPD (outpatient department) patients, at times 200 patients. I’d be exhausted by just 10 or 12 OPD patients.”

Pai and Shivashanker say that certain other biological factors such as a gene for an enzyme called monoamine oxidase, also linked to risk-taking, may be a possible explanation for surgeons’ boldness.