Patients ‘twice as likely to die on operating table if surgeon is about to go on holiday’

Patients going under the knife have double the chance of dying if their surgeon is about to take a holiday, a leading doctor has claimed.

Heart specialist Samer Nashef says that those operated on the day before the surgeon was due to go away had a mortality rate that was just over twice that of those operated on after the holiday.

He said: ‘We looked into [mortality rates and surgeons’ holidays] out of interest because we didn’t really know.

‘What we found is that the patients operated on the day just before we went on holiday had a mortality rate that was a little bit more than double the ones operated on when we came back.

He added: ‘That was a bit of a surprise, I wasn’t expecting the getting back to be that safe and there are possibly psychological reasons.’

Mr Nashef – who has written a book called The Naked Surgeon  – was speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

He also contradicted NHS warnings that eating butter, salt and crisps can increase the risk of heart disease, suggesting that there are other factors that have a bigger influence.

He said: ‘There are some things that will definitely help. The first thing and most important is don’t smoke because that is absolutely a guarantee.

‘Being obese is bad, if you have high blood pressure it must be controlled because that is a problem as well and diabetes should be controlled. The things that don’t matter; butter, salt, crisps. These things are not problems.’
Previous research found that patients who have routine operations on a Friday are 24 per cent more likely to die than if they had undergone the procedure earlier in the week..

Worryingly, the figure is for common procedures such as hip replacements, rather than for potentially more difficult emergency cases.

It is thought this is because there are fewer senior staff on duty to aid them should something go wrong as they recover.

Picture from Rex