Editor's Note A study led by researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago finds non-Hispanic Black, low income, and publicly insured patients received higher rates of delayed appendicitis diagnoses and long postoperative hospital stays. The cohort study included 80,312 patients who underwent open or laparoscopic appendectomy in…

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Editor's Note This German study finds that extension of the currently recommended 10-year screening colonoscopy intervals may be warranted, especially for female and younger participants without gastrointestinal symptoms. Data on 1.25 million individuals in the German screening colonoscopy registry, the world’s largest registry of its kind, were analyzed. A total…

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Editor's Note This study led by American College of Surgeons researchers finds that most hospitals that implemented an enhanced recovery program (ERP) for colorectal surgery had difficulty improving process compliance. Researchers evaluated improvement uniformity among 151 hospitals participating in an 18-month implementation protocol for 6 ERP process measures (oral antibiotics,…

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Editor's Note A Medscape survey of more than 9,100 physicians across 29 specialties finds that 75% were happy outside of work before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that dropped to 58% after the pandemic, the March 7 Becker’s Hospital Review reports. The survey, which looks at physicians’ mental health, happiness with…

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Editor's Note This study, presented March 7 at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting in Las Vegas, finds high reported satisfaction and outcomes in patients who had outpatient joint arthroplasty procedures in academic medical centers. The study included 281 outpatient total joint arthroplasty (TJA) and unicondylar knee…

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Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons (ACS) on March 6 announced that a group of leading medical and public health professional organizations are forming the Healthcare Coalition for Firearm Injury Prevention. The group is using a comprehensive public health approach to advance firearm injury prevention through education of healthcare…

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Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, finds that postoperative mortality was higher in Black men than Black women, White men, and White women. A total of 1,868,036 Black and White Medicare…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission on March 1 announced a revision to Performance Improvement (PI) standard PI:01.01.01, Element of Performance (EP) 4, which has to do with data collection on significant discrepancies between preoperative and postoperative diagnoses. The revision was made after healthcare organizations expressed confusion with the requirement. The…

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Editor's Note This study from the Mayo Clinic finds that despite calls for the expansion of outpatient surgery to mitigate the growing backlog of surgical cases during COVID-19, the transition of general surgery procedures from inpatient to outpatient settings occurred in only a small subset of procedures. This cohort study…

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Editor's Note This study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, finds no significant improvements over the last decade in postoperative outcomes in women undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery. This retrospective cohort study included 1,297,204 (317,716 were women) patients who had primary CABG surgery between…

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