Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: A new study has found that patients who are operated on during night are twice more likely to die than patients who are operated on during the day.
The aim of this study was is to investigate the relationship between postoperative mortality and the time of the day of surgery.
The researchers evaluated all surgical procedures for five years and a retrospective review of 30 days postoperative in hospital mortality was carried out at the hospital.
A database was constructed collecting variables about surgical interventions and the working day was divided into three time blocks -- daytime, evening and night.
There were 41,716 elective and emergency surgeries performed on 33,942 patients in 40,044 hospitals.
The researchers found that those operated on at night were 2.17 times more likely to die than those during regular daytime working hours, while patients operated on in the afternoon were 1.43 times more likely to die.
(With IANS inputs)
