6 ms·

> The study, which appears today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), looked at 980,876 procedures performed in US hospitals by 47,489 surgeons. Of those proce

> The study, which appears today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), looked at 980,876 procedures performed in US hospitals by 47,489 surgeons. Of those procedures, 2,064 (0.2%) took place on a surgeon’s birthday. So, only a fraction of the surgeons performed operation on their birthdays. Would be interesting to compare the outcomes using the same surgeon group: surgeries on birthday vs same-surgeon surgeries on other dates.

lmilcin 6y ago
The question is, are surgeons that are likely to work on their birthdays any different from the ones that would take day off.
spiderfarmer 6y ago
I never took the day off on my birthday, but a lot of people do. So it might also make sense to ask why these surgeons are operating on their birthdays. Did they take the day off and went back to perform surgery on a critical patient? Are they overworked? Etc.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I mean surgeries on Christmas probably are way more fatal too since they are the ones that can't wait. You would excepct that it is the day after your birthday the surgeon is worse (risk for hangover or less sleep).
  - mikestew 6y ago
    It’s coming up on a year since I got wheeled into the operating room as my Christmas present for 2019. I’m obviously still here to tell the tale, but the thought did cross my mind: “how much of a hurry are you to get home, Dr. Takiyama?” But according to TFA, a Christmas Day surgery was about equal in risk to one on the surgeon’s birthday. Which means my worries weren’t entirely unfounded.
- englishrookie 6y ago
  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.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    As far as I know it's not a thing here, either. I've known one or two that do, but in my experience the vast majority of people will celebrate their birthday on the nearest weekend, if they do so at all.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    It does happen in Europe too; It's more of a personal preference than an actual thing, though.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    Depends on where in Europe you are and how much the people you know value getting wasted or stoned. Personally, I prefer taking off at birthday + 1 day after.
  - markus92 6y ago
    Dutchie here, most of my colleagues do.
  - kjakm 6y ago
    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 prevalent in Europe given we seem to get more time off and taking time off is less 'frowned upon' (at least this is my experience compared with my US based colleagues).
    - Reason077 6y ago
      > "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!
randomsearch 6y ago
No just "interesting" be essential - without it this is junk science.
- kkoncevicius 6y ago
  Yeah I mostly agree, was trying to be polite.
  - phreeza 6y ago
    They included a surgeon control variable in their model. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf
    - Aissen 6y ago
      Yes, they say they did all this (and much more) in secondary analyses. I'm curious how does one find the eTables supplementary information ? Edit: nevermind, found it: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2020/12/09/bmj.m4381.DC1/kath062268.ww.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2020/12/09/bmj.m4381.D... Edit 2: it looks like solid, peer-reviewed research
      - randomsearch 6y ago
        Ah, couldn't access the page so had assumed parent was correct reporting that they hadn't done this control. Sorry for getting that wrong - won't trust similar posts in the future.
esquire_900 6y ago
You make a good point, though I'd like to add that one would expect 1/365 = .274% of procedures to be on a random day (like a birthday). .21% is not so far off that it can't be random chance.
- eCa 6y ago
  That, and since most planned surgeries ought to take place Mon-Fri, if anything it’s a higher percentage than I would have expected.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Day of the week cancels out.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  > .21% is not so far off that it can't be random chance How far off exactly would it need to be before it can be random chance?
  - esquire_900 6y ago
    Interesting question, wondered that myself as well. My statistics are a little rusty, so doing a quick simulation shows that the range is about .25-.29 (code sample 1). However, things like operations aren't completely random, and you might be more correct by looking at something like a Poisson process, resulting in a range of about .14-.44 for this sample size (code sample 2). All in the end to be taken with a grain of salt of course, as the planning component of operations eliminates most statistical properties :) ``` operations = np.random.randint(0, 365, 980000) pd.Series(operations).value_counts().sort_values() / 980000 ``` ``` x = np.random.poisson(.0089, 1000000) x = (pd.Series(x).cumsum() / 24).round() x.groupby(x).count().iloc[:365].sort_values() / 980000 ```
wjnc 6y ago
They included fixed effects for hospitals and surgeons: "To test whether our findings were affected by including both hospital and surgeon fixed effects in the same regression models." [1] Perhaps the link could be changed to the paper itself? [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4381 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4381
- throwawaylolx 6y ago
  >Perhaps the link could be changed to the paper itself? Especially since OP's link won't load.
phreeza 6y ago
They controlled for surgeon effects though, so I suspect the result would be similar. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tinus_hn 6y ago
If they didn’t change the schedule at all, 100/365 percent of all surgeries would be on the surgeons birthday. Which is 0.27%. Put another way, assuming a flat distribution, on any given day 980876/365 = 2687 surgeries happen. While apparently on their birthday it’s 2064. Saying ‘only a fraction of the surgeons performed operation on their holidays’ is a strong exaggeration. It’s about 75% of surgeons.

lmilcin 6y ago

The question is, are surgeons that are likely to work on their birthdays any different from the ones that would take day off.

spiderfarmer 6y ago

I never took the day off on my birthday, but a lot of people do. So it might also make sense to ask why these surgeons are operating on their birthdays. Did they take the day off and went back to perform surgery on a critical patient? Are they overworked? Etc.

rightbyte 6y ago
I mean surgeries on Christmas probably are way more fatal too since they are the ones that can't wait. You would excepct that it is the day after your birthday the surgeon is worse (risk for hangover or less sleep).
- mikestew 6y ago
  It’s coming up on a year since I got wheeled into the operating room as my Christmas present for 2019. I’m obviously still here to tell the tale, but the thought did cross my mind: “how much of a hurry are you to get home, Dr. Takiyama?” But according to TFA, a Christmas Day surgery was about equal in risk to one on the surgeon’s birthday. Which means my worries weren’t entirely unfounded.
englishrookie 6y ago
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.
- function_seven 6y ago
  As far as I know it's not a thing here, either. I've known one or two that do, but in my experience the vast majority of people will celebrate their birthday on the nearest weekend, if they do so at all.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  It does happen in Europe too; It's more of a personal preference than an actual thing, though.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Depends on where in Europe you are and how much the people you know value getting wasted or stoned. Personally, I prefer taking off at birthday + 1 day after.
- markus92 6y ago
  Dutchie here, most of my colleagues do.
- kjakm 6y ago
  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 prevalent in Europe given we seem to get more time off and taking time off is less 'frowned upon' (at least this is my experience compared with my US based colleagues).
  - Reason077 6y ago
    > "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!

randomsearch 6y ago

No just "interesting" be essential - without it this is junk science.

kkoncevicius 6y ago
Yeah I mostly agree, was trying to be polite.
- phreeza 6y ago
  They included a surgeon control variable in their model. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf
  - Aissen 6y ago
    Yes, they say they did all this (and much more) in secondary analyses. I'm curious how does one find the eTables supplementary information ? Edit: nevermind, found it: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2020/12/09/bmj.m4381.DC1/kath062268.ww.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2020/12/09/bmj.m4381.D... Edit 2: it looks like solid, peer-reviewed research
    - randomsearch 6y ago
      Ah, couldn't access the page so had assumed parent was correct reporting that they hadn't done this control. Sorry for getting that wrong - won't trust similar posts in the future.

esquire_900 6y ago

You make a good point, though I'd like to add that one would expect 1/365 = .274% of procedures to be on a random day (like a birthday). .21% is not so far off that it can't be random chance.

eCa 6y ago
That, and since most planned surgeries ought to take place Mon-Fri, if anything it’s a higher percentage than I would have expected.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Day of the week cancels out.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
> .21% is not so far off that it can't be random chance How far off exactly would it need to be before it can be random chance?
- esquire_900 6y ago
  Interesting question, wondered that myself as well. My statistics are a little rusty, so doing a quick simulation shows that the range is about .25-.29 (code sample 1). However, things like operations aren't completely random, and you might be more correct by looking at something like a Poisson process, resulting in a range of about .14-.44 for this sample size (code sample 2). All in the end to be taken with a grain of salt of course, as the planning component of operations eliminates most statistical properties :) ``` operations = np.random.randint(0, 365, 980000) pd.Series(operations).value_counts().sort_values() / 980000 ``` ``` x = np.random.poisson(.0089, 1000000) x = (pd.Series(x).cumsum() / 24).round() x.groupby(x).count().iloc[:365].sort_values() / 980000 ```

wjnc 6y ago

They included fixed effects for hospitals and surgeons: "To test whether our findings were affected by including both hospital and surgeon fixed effects in the same regression models." [1] Perhaps the link could be changed to the paper itself? [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4381 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4381

throwawaylolx 6y ago
>Perhaps the link could be changed to the paper itself? Especially since OP's link won't load.

phreeza 6y ago

They controlled for surgeon effects though, so I suspect the result would be similar. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/371/bmj.m4381.full.pdf

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tinus_hn 6y ago

If they didn’t change the schedule at all, 100/365 percent of all surgeries would be on the surgeons birthday. Which is 0.27%. Put another way, assuming a flat distribution, on any given day 980876/365 = 2687 surgeries happen. While apparently on their birthday it’s 2064. Saying ‘only a fraction of the surgeons performed operation on their holidays’ is a strong exaggeration. It’s about 75% of surgeons.