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Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

bmj.com

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Re: Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

#4
post #2

Almost certainly the selection bias plays a major role - surgeries done early in a week are different than those scheduled later in the week.

Yeah, this reminds me a lot of the "Impossibly Hungry Judges" problem[0].

[0] http://nautil.us/blog/impossibly-hungry-judges

Re: Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

#5
post #2

Almost certainly the selection bias plays a major role - surgeries done early in a week are different than those scheduled later in the week.

That's certainly a possible confounding factor that should be investigated, but let's not jump to conclusions.

Jumping to the conclusion that Monday surgeries are simpler could hide an important phenomena if that's not the reason Monday surgeries have lower 30 day mortality rates.

Re: Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

#6
Are there any other interesting things like this that people know of? I guess you could consider them advanced life hacks in a way.

One things I was thinking of is trying to schedule meetings right after lunch. I'm basing this on the research of judges being more lenient after lunch. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-b...

Re: Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

#7
post #2

Almost certainly the selection bias plays a major role - surgeries done early in a week are different than those scheduled later in the week.

They do take this into account in the text. Odds ratios imply less risky procedures were normally done on weekends anyway, and you see the effect on all days other than Monday (to a lesser extent).

Re: Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery (2013)

#9
post #4
post #2

Almost certainly the selection bias plays a major role - surgeries done early in a week are different than those scheduled later in the week.

Yeah, this reminds me a lot of the "Impossibly Hungry Judges" problem[0]. [0] http://nautil.us/blog/impossibly-hungry-judges

This is a great article. The original paper was in my head as a truth, and I've revised that since reading this post. Thanks!
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