I’d think that with all the muscle in the way, it would require more cutting. Also, is the recovery time longer for musculur people? More healing would be required, right?
The simple answer is, NO. Just the opposite, in fact. Surgeons PREFER cutting through muscle to cutting through many other kinds of tissue.
To use a VERY crude analogy, do you find it easier to cut through a lean steak or a fatty steak? The lean steak, of course. That’s because muscle cuts easily and smoothly, while fat is tough to cut through.
In the same way, a surgeon would have a much easier time cutting through a very muscular patient than through a very flabby patient.
astorian is right. I took comparative vertebrate anatomy a few years ago, and I can tell you dissecting fat animals is a huge pain in the ass. I took the biggest cat I could find, because I thought its organs would be nice and large and easy to identify, only to find I had picked the fattest cat I have ever seen. Getting through all that fat is big, greasy, smelly mess.
sigh Of course I had to read that while I was eating a cheese sandwich. Hello nausea.
cainxinth–my lab partner had the same problem with her cat. Mine was a bit more svelte. A friend of mine in med school says her group takes the longest, because they have the fattest patient and spend most of their time cleaning him up.
To the OP–people who are more fit would probably have an easier time in recovery, simply due to the fact that healthier people tend to heal faster.
The only potential problem I can think of, and perhaps the medical Dopers can confirm or dissaffirm this, is that a more massive person, I hear, is more difficult/risky to sedate.
There are subtle differences between disecting dead animals, eating meat and surgery. Often surgeons take great pains to avoid unnecessarily cutting muscle fibres. I recall reading some years ago that jockey Willie Shoemaker’s surgeon said that it took him twice as long as normal to pin Shoemaker’s broken leg due to the extreme muscular development.