Complication Rates Similar Whether Surgeons Operate the Night Before or Not

Surgeons who performed procedures while on call the night before performing daytime elective laparoscopic cholecystectomies had similar rates of complications when compared with surgeons who did not perform any procedures the night before, according to the results of a study published in the November 6, 2013, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers identified 2,078 procedures in which 331 different surgeons across 102 Canadian community hospitals had operated between midnight and 7 a.m. the night before and compared each with 4 additional procedures performed by the same surgeon for which there was no evidence of having operated the night before. They found no significant association in conversion rates from laparoscopic to open operations between procedures when surgeons operated the night before compared with when they did not operate the previous night (2.2% versus 1.9%). In addition, the data did not indicate any association between operating the night before versus not operating the night before and the risk of iatrogenic injuries such as organ damage (0.7% versus 0.9%) or death (0.2% versus 0.1%).