Source: NPR
According to a new study published in the journal JAMA, some patients who undergo particular surgeries and do not get the full attention of a main surgeon are more at risk of suffering complications or even death later on.
The study breaks down how doctors often “double-book”, meaning surgeries are often booked not just back-to-back, but overlapping, since the main surgeon can move from one patient to the next quickly, leaving the smaller, easier parts of the surgery for less senior surgeons to complete.
Researchers ultimately found that for the general population undergoing surgeries, there isn’t a higher risk of suffering complications when undergoing a double-booked surgery, but for a very specific group of individuals, there is.
That group includes older patients and those with underlying medical conditions, for which researchers found a 5.8 percent higher risk for complications compared to 4.7 for patients who had the full attention of the main surgeon.
Surgeons say these overlapping surgeries are crucial for efficiency and to help more patients, but some have acknowledge that there are certain high-risk patients that probably require more attention and could benefit from one sole surgeon for their surgeries.
Read Full Story: NPR