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Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

psychnewsdaily.com

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Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#71

Post by alberto_ol »

graderjs wrote: post #17
voxl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we need an opposite saying for sentiments like this to the age old "correlation does not equal causation", something like "correlation does not mean automatically dismiss"

Correlation doesn't imply causation but it could co-occur with it Too long Correlative causation is more correlated with causation than non-correlative causation Too tongue twisting Correlation is closer to causation than no correlation I like that Ignoring possible causation is correlated with stupidity Too cruel Correlation does not equal causation but they are correlated Not bad Anyone else?

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

https://xkcd.com/552/

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#72

Post by gvx »

graderjs wrote: post #17
voxl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we need an opposite saying for sentiments like this to the age old "correlation does not equal causation", something like "correlation does not mean automatically dismiss"

Correlation doesn't imply causation but it could co-occur with it Too long Correlative causation is more correlated with causation than non-correlative causation Too tongue twisting Correlation is closer to causation than no correlation I like that Ignoring possible causation is correlated with stupidity Too cruel Correlation does not equal causation but they are correlated Not bad Anyone else?

I always liked xkcd's "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'." (https://xkcd.com/552/) although it is rather long.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#73

Post by quickthrower2 »

I’m going to guess (article won’t load for me) it is because the title should be “proportion of elderly deaths is 23% higher for surgery done on surgeons birthday” which might be a different thing if working on your birthday confounds with a certain type of surgery E.g. emergency surgery and being on call vs. elective surgery

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#74

Post by onehp »

Reason077 wrote: post #66
kjakm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably just a personal thing. I'm in Europe and always take my birthday off - I don't understand why anybody would want to work on their birthday. Even if I don't have plans to celebrate until the weekend the idea of working on my birthday is very depressing (in fact in rarely celebrate my birthday and if I do it's something small like dinner with a couple of friends). To be honest I thought it would be more p…

> "I don't understand why anybody would want to work on their birthday." Well, if you're lucky, your co-workers will chip in and buy a cake!

In all the work environments I've been in (UK) the culture is the opposite, as the birthday person you are expected to bring in cake.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#75

Post by samplenoise »

> The effect size of surgeons’ birthday observed in our analysis (1.3 percentage point increase or a 23% increase in mortality), though substantial, is comparable to the impact of other events, including holidays (e.g., Christmas and New Year) and weekends. > But the authors say the “natural experiment” in the present study is more revealing than, for example, holiday-related mortality rates. That is because “those events not only affect physicians’ performance but also influence patients’ decision to seek care (i.e., patients seeking care on these special days might be sicker than those seeking care on other days), as well as hospital staffing.” Unless, of course, the patients know their surgeon’s birthday, which is unlikely (though that may change if this study becomes widely known). That doesn't take exclude the possibility that surgeons may be assigned different patients on their birthdays. Some studies on the 'weekend effect' [1] seem to also control for illness severity, not clear if that was done here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_effect

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#76

Post by pedro596 »

kjakm wrote: post #61
englishrookie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a thing in the US, taking a day off on your birthday? To the best of my knowledge, nobody does that in Europe - certainly not in the Netherlands.

It's probably just a personal thing. I'm in Europe and always take my birthday off - I don't understand why anybody would want to work on their birthday. Even if I don't have plans to celebrate until the weekend the idea of working on my birthday is very depressing (in fact in rarely celebrate my birthday and if I do it's something small like dinner with a couple of friends). To be honest I thought it would be more p…

I'm from Europe and in my past job my team had the tradition of having cake bought or baked by the guy celebrating his birthday.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#77

Post by samplenoise »

"The effect size of surgeons’ birthday observed in our analysis (1.3 percentage point increase or a 23% increase in mortality), though substantial, is comparable to the impact of other events, including holidays (e.g., Christmas and New Year) and weekends. (...) But the authors say the “natural experiment” in the present study is more revealing than, for example, holiday-related mortality rates. That is because “those events not only affect physicians’ performance but also influence patients’ decision to seek care (i.e., patients seeking care on these special days might be sicker than those seeking care on other days), as well as hospital staffing.” Unless, of course, the patients know their surgeon’s birthday, which is unlikely (though that may change if this study becomes widely known)."

That doesn't take exclude the possibility that surgeons may be assigned different patients on their birthdays. Some studies on the 'weekend effect' [1] seem to also control for illness severity, not clear if that was done here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_effect

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#78

Post by brmgb »

kjakm wrote: post #61
englishrookie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a thing in the US, taking a day off on your birthday? To the best of my knowledge, nobody does that in Europe - certainly not in the Netherlands.

It's probably just a personal thing. I'm in Europe and always take my birthday off - I don't understand why anybody would want to work on their birthday. Even if I don't have plans to celebrate until the weekend the idea of working on my birthday is very depressing (in fact in rarely celebrate my birthday and if I do it's something small like dinner with a couple of friends). To be honest I thought it would be more p…

> I don't understand why anybody would want to work on their birthday.

I personally was under the impression that once you left childhood and the impatience of getting presents your birthday pretty much became just a day as usual. That also seems to be how my college treats it but it might be cultural. Europe is not a homogeneous place.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#79

Post by Ensorceled »

Anecdotally, my father-in-law was chief of staff for a small city hospital and they had a rule about not scheduling afternoon surgeries on important days like anniversaries, birthdays, etc. Basically, if the surgery started going long, you didn't want the surgeon worrying about missing their spouses birthday, birthday with their kids or an anniversary.

It actually wasn't that many surgeries delayed, as the surgeon just juggled surgeries and consults/paperwork/insurance to fit.

If this is fairly standard practice, then an afternoon birthday surgery would be an emergency situation and, hence, more deadly. Given the paper said some surgeons take the day off entirely, any surgeon with that habit would be performing an emergency surgery.

Re: Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday

#80

Post by tomxor »

mhh__ wrote: post #52

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/01/surgical-safety-checklist... Getting surgeons to adopt the kind of "It's obvious but point and speak or you're fired"-style checklists a la operating an aircraft has reduced complications (from the minor to deaths) by several percent in the NHS. It's perhaps worrying given how low-hanging some of these fruit are - i.e. "Do we have the right patient?".

I'm probably going to sound silly now but I do this when doing any technical work I deem important or critical enough, point and say outloud what it's for or what state it should be in or in the imperative what to do to it... it does work, it somehow catches silly mistakes compared to keeping everything in your mind, and also gives you confidence because it works like a checklist.

Known as pointing and calling in transport AFAIK.

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