ArticleBritish journal of pain2014
Howling at the moon? The effect of lunar phases on post-surgical pain outcome.
Article in British journal of pain, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Are Postoperative Complications of Joint Replacement Correlated With the Phase of the Moon? An Analysis of Data From the Medicare Registry.Deutsches Arzteblatt international · 2023Article
- Assessment of effects of moon phases on hospital outpatient visits: An observational national study.AIMS public health · 2023Article
- Lunar cycle may have an effect on Shock Wave Lithotripsy related pain outcome.Ghana medical journal · 2017Article
- The Influence of Lunar Phases on Complications in Cataract Surgery: An Analysis of 16,965 Patients.Journal of ophthalmology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveMany people are convinced that lunar phases influence their lives - despite the fact that a lot of studies have shown that this belief is wrong. In this article, we investigate the effect of lunar phases on acute post-surgical pain and on treatment-related side effects. We hypothesize that there is no influence.
methodsThe data for the study were collected in 2010 and 2011 in 10 international hospitals participating in the research project PAIN OUT. Hospitalized patients were asked for their pain after surgery and pain treatment side effects using numerical ratings scales from 0 to 10. We applied Kurskal-Wallis H-tests to find out if the four moon phases show significant differences in 14 outcome variables. Afterwards, we adjusted for age, gender and three tracer surgeries.
resultsA total of 12,224 patient data sets were assessed. For most variables and sub-groups, there is no lunar effect on the observed outcome variables. The only items that show statistically significant differences are pain interference with sleep (p = 0.01) and drowsiness (p = 0.01). The only sub-groups that show statistically significant connections to lunar phases in some variables are men (7 out of 14 variables significant) and elderly people (4 out of 14 variables significant). DISCUSSION: Even in the statistically significant sub-groups, the differences are small and only show up in some variables. We conclude that lunar phases have no effect on post-surgical pain or its side effects. The hypothesis holds. Thus, there is no reason for patients to postpone surgeries or to fear surgeries on any given date.
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