Health & Medicine
Surgeon All-Nighters don't make Next-Day Procedures more Risky
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Nov 06, 2013 11:36 AM EST
Sleep plays a critical part of our everyday health. Everyone needs a good night's rest to properly rejuvenate and function during the next day.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that throughout a 24-hour period, the average adult receive 7 to 9 hours of sleep. And for teenagers to newborns, they'll need a bit more.
Yet many studies have shown that doctors who go into surgeries without adequate R & R are more likely to perform poorly. But due to the long hours spent in the hospital day in and day out, a doctor or medical professional may not always get the rest he or she needs.
However, since doctors literally hold people's lives in their hands, getting adequate rest to properly perform surgeries and other medical procedures is an essential part of their job.
According to a new study, surgeons who pulled all-nighters were not any less efficient than surgeons who slept throughout the night to perform well on and on schedule.
"Even if they [patients] have a surgeon who may be working long hours or is tired, they shouldn't be worried that he isn't capable of performing the surgery to the best of his ability," Danielle Nash, who worked on the study at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Long, Ontario, Canada, said, via Reuters Health.
Study authors examined medical records from patients who received non-emergency gallbladder surgeries. The planned surgeries were completed by 331 surgeons from 102 community hospitals in Ontario. Researchers determined which surgeons operated during the night before each scheduled procedure by looking through surgeon's billing for emergency procedures. Samplings showed that 2,078 surgeons had operated after pulling an all-nighter in comparison to 8,312 cases in which the doctors did not operate the night before the surgery.
And surprisingly, unlike previous studies, being sleep deprived seem to have no affect on the surgeons' ability to perform gallbladder surgery. In only two percent of cases did surgeons have to create larger cuts than normal due to other problems, causing patients to stay in the hospital for a longer period of time. And under one percent of cases showed a doctor-inflicted injury, via a punctured blood vessel or similar issue. Deaths within a month following surgery were also extremely rare, but similar in both groups of surgeons.
More information regarding the study can be found via the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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First Posted: Nov 06, 2013 11:36 AM EST
Sleep plays a critical part of our everyday health. Everyone needs a good night's rest to properly rejuvenate and function during the next day.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that throughout a 24-hour period, the average adult receive 7 to 9 hours of sleep. And for teenagers to newborns, they'll need a bit more.
Yet many studies have shown that doctors who go into surgeries without adequate R & R are more likely to perform poorly. But due to the long hours spent in the hospital day in and day out, a doctor or medical professional may not always get the rest he or she needs.
However, since doctors literally hold people's lives in their hands, getting adequate rest to properly perform surgeries and other medical procedures is an essential part of their job.
According to a new study, surgeons who pulled all-nighters were not any less efficient than surgeons who slept throughout the night to perform well on and on schedule.
"Even if they [patients] have a surgeon who may be working long hours or is tired, they shouldn't be worried that he isn't capable of performing the surgery to the best of his ability," Danielle Nash, who worked on the study at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Long, Ontario, Canada, said, via Reuters Health.
Study authors examined medical records from patients who received non-emergency gallbladder surgeries. The planned surgeries were completed by 331 surgeons from 102 community hospitals in Ontario. Researchers determined which surgeons operated during the night before each scheduled procedure by looking through surgeon's billing for emergency procedures. Samplings showed that 2,078 surgeons had operated after pulling an all-nighter in comparison to 8,312 cases in which the doctors did not operate the night before the surgery.
And surprisingly, unlike previous studies, being sleep deprived seem to have no affect on the surgeons' ability to perform gallbladder surgery. In only two percent of cases did surgeons have to create larger cuts than normal due to other problems, causing patients to stay in the hospital for a longer period of time. And under one percent of cases showed a doctor-inflicted injury, via a punctured blood vessel or similar issue. Deaths within a month following surgery were also extremely rare, but similar in both groups of surgeons.
More information regarding the study can be found via the Journal of the American Medical Association.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone