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Weekends Worse for Surgery

Emergency surgeries performed on a weekend may have poorer results than the same operation performed on a weekday, a new study concludes.

 

Researchers used a large database of hospitalizations nationwide to study 7,112 emergency surgeries for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, all of which were performed within two days of admission.

 

Writing online in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, the researchers reported no difference between weekday and weekend admissions in age or gender, the presence of other illnesses, or in-hospital deaths between the two groups. And among the Crohn’s patients, there was no significant difference in any postoperative complication.

 

But ulcerative colitis patients admitted on the weekend were about 70 percent more likely to have complications than those admitted on weekdays. Postoperative infections were 50 percent more likely in weekend patients, pulmonary complications were twice as common, and the risk for wound complications and repeat surgery was 10 times as high.

 

“This doesn’t mean that if you’re admitted on a weekend, you should fight surgery,” said the lead author, Dr. Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, an assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. “If you need surgery, you should get it. But the question is why this happens — it’s apparently not because of patient factors. Is it infrastructure, provider experience? It’s important to find out what causes these disparities.”

 

Source: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/weekends-worse-for-surgery/?ref=health