Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on March 8 issued a letter to alert healthcare providers about an increasing number of medical device reports on surgical staplers for internal use and implantable surgical staples. The most common reported problems include opening of the staple line, malformation of staples,…

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Editor's Note Provider attire is a potential source of pathogenic bacterial transmission in healthcare settings, this review study finds. A total of 22 articles were included in this analysis, which found that provider attire was commonly colonized by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), with white coats laundered less frequently than scrubs. The…

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Editor's Note In this study of adult surgical patients across all ages, frailty was associated with higher postoperative rates of major illness and readmissions as well as increased costs. Of 14,530 patients (31.9% inpatient, 68.1% outpatient) analyzed, 3.4% had high frailty (5.3% of inpatients and 2.5% of outpatients). Compared with…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on February 28 issued a Safety Communication on the safety and effectiveness of using robotically-assisted surgical devices in mastectomy procedures or in the prevention or treatment of cancer in women. The FDA cited limited, preliminary evidence that the use of robotically-assisted surgical…

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Editor's Note Long-term opioid use among family members was associated with persistent postoperative opioid use in opioid-naïve adolescents and young adults and should be screened for preoperatively, this study finds. Of 346,251 opioid-naïve patients aged 13 to 21 years having common surgical and dental procedures, persistent opioid use occurred in…

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Editor's Note In this multicenter study, overlapping surgery was not significantly associated with in-hospital mortality or postoperative complication rates, but it was significantly linked to increased surgery time. Researchers from Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, analyzed 66,430 procedures, of which 8,224 were overlapping. Overlapping surgery…

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An estimated 22 million people in the US have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but up to 80% of cases are undiagnosed, and some 30% to 40% of the surgical population has diagnosed or suspected sleep apnea. More than 3 years ago, the Joint Commission issued a Quick Safety document about…

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Editor's Note In this prospective study, nonfrailty and elective surgery were positively associated with functional recovery of older patients after major surgery. Of 754 community-living patients 70 years or older who were analyzed, 266 survived major surgery with increased disability and were monitored for 6 months. A total of 174…

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Editor's Note Because a subset of patients are responsible for a disproportionate share of Medicare spending, targeting high-cost patients (ie, “hot spotting”) for cost containment efforts would be an effective strategy to reduce costs in surgical patients, this study finds. Using Medicare claims data from 2010 to 2013, University of…

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Editor's Note Using Fitbit activity monitors to improve assessment of daily ambulation, this study found that each step taken towards 1,000 steps the day after major surgery resulted in significantly lower odds of a prolonged hospital length of stay (LOS). This analysis of 100 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los…

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