Surgery is not negatively affected if surgeons work the previous night, based on a study published in New England Journal of Medicine, according to Medscape.
Here are six key points about the study:
1. Night work does not present any more risk factors than already present during surgeries.
2. Anand Govindarajan, MD, of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Department of Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, led the study.
3. Researchers studied medical records of patients who underwent one of these procedures: cholecystectomy, gastric bypass, colon resection, coronary-artery bypass grafting, coronary angioplasty, knee replacement, hip replacement, repair of hip fracture, hysterectomy, spinal surgery, craniotomy or lung resection.
4. Fee codes revealed which physicians performed surgery after working night shifts from midnight to 7 a.m. Researchers then divided patients into pairs, one undergoing surgery when the physician had worked the night before, the other undergoing surgery when the same physician had not worked the previous night.
5. No great statistical discrepancies were detected in the outcomes of the compared surgeries.
6. However, complications were heightened slightly when surgeons performed two or more procedures the previous night.
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