Editor's Note Evidence is mounting for the use of antibiotics as a valid alternative to surgery for acute appendicitis, including in pediatric cases, the Washington Post reported August 17. The article details how this treatment—described as a “dark secret” by one expert testifying to its use in the 1950s, prior…

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Editor's Note A post hoc analysis of the SCOT phase 3 randomized clinical trial reveals that initiating adjuvant chemotherapy more than 6 weeks after surgery is linked to worse disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with high-risk stage II and stage III colorectal cancer. Published June 12 in JAMA Surgery, the…

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Editor's Note An August 6 report in MedPage Today details how the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is pushing to end the practice of using live animals for physiology training. According to the article, some surgical residencies use live animals (usually pigs) as practice patients. In contrast, only 3%…

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Editor's Note A dispute over cameras in ORs reportedly added tension to nurse strike negotiations that recently culminated in a tentative agreement with union nurses at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. According to an August 7 CBS News report, the OR cameras are intended to assist with robotic surgeries.…

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Editor's Note Optimizing patient positioning can help reduce the risk of surgical site infections due to airborne contaminants in positive-pressure ORs, according to a study published August 12 in Nature: Scientific Reports. Maintaining higher pressure than adjacent spaces prevents entry of contaminants from environments external to the OR. For this…

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Editor's Note The rising frequency of wildfires has anesthesiologists concerned about potential for adverse surgical outcomes to exposed patients, according to an article in the Online First edition of Anesthesiology,  the peer-reviewed journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). As of an August 6 report from ASA, nearly 100…

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Symptomatic SARS-COV-2 patients undergoing surgical procedures experience significantly higher 30-day in-hospital mortality, ICU admission, longer ICU and hospital stay, and pulmonary complications, according to a study published August 1 in the Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing. Researchers analyzed a year’s worth of records of 102 infected surgical patients and those who…

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Editor's Note An electronic health record (EHR)-based nudge could significantly reduce low-value axillary surgeries in older women with early-stage breast cancer, researchers reported July 17 in JAMA Surgery. Conducted across eight clinical settings, the initiative significantly cut the rates of low-value sentinel lymph node biopsies (SLNB) by nearly 50% over…

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Editor's Note Automated surgical video analysis could enhance evaluation of an OR team’s nontechnical skills, according to a study published July 31 in JAMA Network Open. Conducted between January 2021 and May 2022, the cross-sectional study involved 30 cardiovascular surgical teams at a teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Using OpenPose,…

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Editor's Note Medical professionals have long accepted that bilateral mastectomy does not improve survival outcomes for breast cancer patients. However, a study published in JAMA Oncology reveals a puzzling finding: Those who develop a second cancer in the other breast have a higher risk of death. As detailed in a…

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