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Surgery

Day or night—does the time of liver transplantation matter?

Surgical complications are a major cause of avoidable medical mistakes, and might occur more frequently when surgery is performed at night. In a recent study, Lonze et al. found that patients who underwent liver transplantation surgery at night had a longer operative time and a greater risk of early death than those who underwent surgery during the day.

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Figure 1: The relationship between the time when consent is obtained and the start of retrieval and between consent time and the start of transplant.

References

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Jon O'Neill and Kerri Barber, NHS Blood and Transplant, for preparing Figure 1.

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Neuberger, J. Day or night—does the time of liver transplantation matter?. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 7, 596–597 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2010.156

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