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Men feel more pain than women while recovering from major surgery, a study suggests. 

According to the BBC, more than 10,000 patients were monitored after operations, including heart or abdominal surgery, at a hospital in Germany.

Interviews with male and female patients, presented at the Euroanaesthesia conference, showed the men were reporting more pain.

Experts said gender differences in pain were still a disputed issue.

Hormones may play a role - the male sex hormone testosterone can reduce pain and women's pain thresholds are altered by the menstrual cycle.

Cultural and psychological factors are also thought to be involved.

The data from more than four years of surgeries involving 10,200 patients was collected at University Hospitals of the Ruhr University of Bochum in Germany.

The analysis showed there was no overall difference between the two genders' level of pain after an operation.

However, when the researchers divided the operations into major surgery and minor treatments, such as a biopsy, a pattern did emerge.

The male patients felt more pain after major surgery, while women were more likely to report pain after smaller procedures.

Dr Andreas Sandner-Kiesling, from the Medical University of Graz in Austria, said: "The influence of gender is a key issue in medicine.

"The gender differences on pain perception are still heavily disputed, both in experimental and clinical fields.

"Our data do not definitely clarify this issue, however, based on our findings it can be presumed that the type and severity of surgery may play a pivotal role, as females express higher pain scores after minor procedures, whereas males are more affected after major surgery."

Dr Beverly Collett, a consultant in pain management and anaesthesia at the University Hospital of Leicester NHS Trust, said women would report pain when heat was applied to the skin before men did, but that differences in pain perception were smaller than animal tests would suggest.

She said there was also a psychological component to pain, and men were known to "increase their ability to resist pain" when treated by young attractive female nurses compared with unattractive old male ones.

Meanwhile entrenched social values from childhood - boys told to get up after a fall, while girls were kissed better - also affected pain perception, she said.