Editor's Note The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated the recall of Hologic Inc.’s BioZorb Marker a class 1, indicating a risk of serious injury or death. BioZorb is an implantable radiographic marker used to mark soft tissue (such as breast tissue) for future medical procedures. Provided sterile…

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Editor's Note The more diverse the surgical team, the better the outcomes for patients and the lower the cost of care, according to a study of more than 700,000 operations at 88 hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Published May 15 in the British Journal of Surgery, findings show that surgeon-anesthetist teams…

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Editor's Note Sexual orientation has a significant impact on all-cause mortality rates among female nurses, according to a study published April 25 in Jama. The prospective cohort study focused on 90,833 women initially recruited in 1989 for Nurses’ Health Study II whose sexual orientation had been identified in 1995. Of…

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The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced a Class 1 recall on Monday for Abbott/Thoratec Corp.’s HeartMate II and HeartMate 3 Left Ventricular Assist System (LVAS) due due to biological material buildup obstructing the devices. According to an April 16 CBS News report, surgeons first noticed problems with the…

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Editor's Note Although intraoperative wound irrigation is a common practice worldwide for preventing surgical site infections, a recent study suggests irrigation with polyhexanide solution should not be recommended as standard clinical practice in open clean-contaminated surgical procedures. Published February 21 in Jama Surgery, the study cautions that additional trials are…

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Editor's Note Although cardiac disease is the leading cause of human morbidity and mortality globally, the complexity of cardiac tissues makes monitoring difficult. To address this issue, a team from University of Massachusetts Amherst and MIT has created a bioelectronic mesh system that can measure movement of cells in cardiac…

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Editor's Note:  Preoperative thyroid hormone replacement independently predicts operative morbidity and length of stay following major abdominal surgery, according to a January 23 report in the American Journal of Surgery. To determine the association between preoperative thyroid hormone replacement and complications following major abdominal surgery, researchers performed a retrospective case…

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Editor's Note: Complex surgeries at high-volume (“hub”) hospitals are less likely to result in death or serious morbidity (DSM) than other hospitals within a system (“spokes”), the American Journal of Surgery reported December 25. However, patients undergoing common surgical care procedures at hubs are more likely to experience prolonged length…

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Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic examines the association between postoperative mobilization after major elective surgery and a composite of primary postoperative outcomes (ie, myocardial injury, ileus, stroke, venous thromboembolism, pulmonary complications, and all-cause in-hospital mortality) and secondary outcomes (ie, hospital length of stay, cumulative…

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Editor's Note Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, find lower mortality rates following emergency general surgery (EGS) in Black and White patients when exposed to primary care prior to the surgical procedure. The retrospective cohort study included 102,384 Medicare patients aged 66 or older who were admitted from the…

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