Are postoperative complications related to resident sleep deprivation?

Abstract

This real-world study compares the outcome of surgery and the sleep-deprivation status of the resident surgeon. Residents who operated the day after a 24-hour on-call period were considered sleep deprived; all other resident surgeons were considered non-sleep-deprived. We retrospectively reviewed data on 6,371 surgical cases and identified 351 postoperative complications. The complication data were analyzed using logistic regression analysis, with outcome being the presence or absence of surgical complications. No statistically significant change in complication incidence was noted when the resident surgeon was sleep deprived.