Surgery First Thing in the Morning

Many of us scheduled for surgery or a procedure requiring an anesthetic have cursed the need for an overnight fast, followed by several hours in the hospital waiting room. However, it may be better, in the long run, to tolerate this inconvenience rather than being scheduled to go under the knife later in the day.

Duke University Medical Center staff members have reported on time-of-day influence on the occurrence of adverse anesthetic effects in over 90,000 operations. Compared with surgery starting at 7:0 am, adverse events were significantly more frequent for cases begun between 3:0 and 4:0 pm. Four times more frequent, in fact. The most common types of event were pain management and post-operative nausea and vomiting.

The scientists suggest that fatigue in doctors and other staff members may be a major factor, although possibly normal daily changes in patients’ physiology might play a role. They emphasize that the problems were mostly minor, and the overall likelihood was extremely low, whatever the time of day. Still, from now on I won’t be urging my surgeon to schedule me for the afternoon session.