Folks facing surgery on a Friday may want to consider rescheduling if they can based on findings from a new study.

People who undergo surgery just before the weekend have a significantly increased risk of death and complications, researchers reported March 4 in JAMA Network Open.

This “weekend effect” occurred across 25 common procedures representing multiple surgical specialties, researchers said.

“Patients who underwent surgery immediately preceding the weekend had a significantly increased risk of complications, readmissions, and mortality compared with those treated after the weekend,” a team led by senior investigator Dr. Raj Satkunasivam of Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, concluded.

“It is important for health care systems to assess how this phenomenon may impact their practices to ensure that patients receive excellent care irrespective of the day,” researchers added.

Hospitals and health care systems tend to operate with skeleton crews during the weekend, leading to concerns that patients are more likely to receive worse care on Saturday and Sunday, researchers said in background notes. This is commonly called the “weekend effect.”

This weekend effect might also apply to people undergoing surgery immediately before the weekend, who will be in the hospital recuperating after their procedure, researchers explained.

To investigate this, researchers analyzed data on nearly 430,000 patients who underwent surgery in Ontario, Canada between 2007 and 2019.

Results showed that people who underwent surgery prior to the weekend had a higher risk of death at 30 days (9% increase), 90 days (10%) and one year (12%) compared to surgeries performed after the weekend.

Pre-weekend surgical patients also fared worse on a composite score combining death, complications and need for rehospitalization, with a 5% increased risk at 30 days and one year following surgery.

In addition to reduced personnel, there are other reasons why hospitals might provide worse care close to the weekend, researchers said.

More junior surgeons with fewer years of experience operate on Friday compared with Monday, and doctors working the weekend have less access to more senior colleagues and specialists, researchers said.

“Furthermore, weekend teams may be less familiar with the patients than the weekday team previously managing care,” researchers noted.

Doctors also might have less access to tests and scans that could better help guide their treatment of patients, researchers added.

“Further study is needed to understand differences in care that may underpin these observations and ensure that patients receive high-quality care regardless of the day of the week,” researchers concluded.

More information

Yale School of Medicine has more on the weekend effect.

SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, March 4, 2025

Source: HealthDay

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