SynthesisBMC health services research2018
The weekend effect: does hospital mortality differ by day of the week? A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in BMC health services research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Effect of off-hours admission on in-hospital mortality in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2026Pooled it
- Weekend admissions and outcomes in patients with pneumonia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Day-of-the-week variation in ischemic stroke admissions in patients with atrial fibrillation.Annals of medicine · 2026Article
- Weekend Hospital Admission and Outcomes Following Emergency Cholecystectomy: A National Analysis of 194,787 Admissions, 2018-2022.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Mortality after emergency presentation: evidence from a cohort of 929 378 Medicare beneficiaries with common cancers diagnosed 2008-2017.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2026Article
- Weekend effect in emergency hospitalizations of older adults in Hong Kong.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Increased Mortality and Complication Rates in Weekend Admissions for Acute Decompensated Heart Failure: A Five-Year National Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Impact of weekend admission on in-hospital mortality in chronic kidney disease: a nationwide analysis of 184 299 hospitalisations in Poland (2017-2021).BMC nephrology · 2026Article
- Experience of the endoscopist mediates the association between weekend effect with rebleeding after endoscopic treatment for Dieulafoy's lesion.Surgical endoscopy · 2026Article
- The weekend effect in sepsis and septic shock: a 5-year US national study.Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center) · 2026Article
- Predictors of short-term outcomes after postoperative periprosthetic femoral fracture : a UK linked data analysis.Bone & joint open · 2025Article
- Development of a Health Text Message System to Support Stroke Prevention: A Component of the Love Your Brain Digital Platform.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2025Article
- Weekend Effect and Predictors of Mortality for Patients Presenting to Emergency Department with COVID-19 Infection.Journal of personalized medicine · 2025Article
- Consultation behaviors and factors influencing hesitation to seek medical care among local dengue patients in Guangzhou, China: a retrospective analysis.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Increased 30-day mortality associated with weekend emergency admission for alcohol-related liver disease in England: a record-linkage study using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.BMJ open gastroenterology · 2025Article
- The Weekend Effect on In-Hospital Mortality-First 13-Year Retrospective Observational Study in Slovakia.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A scoping review of work patterns of junior medical officer tasks in hospital out of hours.Internal medicine journal · 2025Article
- Comparing mortality in the elderly after proximal femur fractures and coxarthrosis: the effect of individual health characteristics and day of surgery.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2025Article
- The weekend effect in pelvic fractures and influence of weekday and weekend accident days: a retrospective study of the German Pelvic Registry.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Identification and attribution of weekly periodic biases in global epidemiological time series data.BMC research notes · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe concept of a weekend effect, poorer outcomes for patients admitted to hospitals at the weekend is not new, but is the focus of debate in England. Many studies have been published which consider outcomes for patients on admitted at the weekend. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to estimate the effect of weekend admission on mortality in UK hospitals.
methodsThis is a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies on the weekend effect in UK hospitals. We used EMBASE, MEDLINE, HMIC, Cochrane, Web of Science and Scopus to search for relevant papers. We included systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and observational studies) on patients admitted to hospital in the UK and published after 2001. Our outcome was death; studies reporting mortality were included. Reviewers identified studies, extracted data and assessed the quality of the evidence, independently and in duplicate. Discrepancy in assessment was considered by a third reviewer. All meta-analyses were performed using a random-effects meta-regression to incorporate the heterogeneity into the weighting.
resultsForty five articles were included in the qualitative synthesis. 53% of the articles concluded that outcomes for patients either undergoing surgery or admitted at the weekend were worse. We included 39 in the meta-analysis which contributed 50 separate analyses. We found an overall effect of 1.07 [odds ratio (OR)] (95%CI:1.03-1.12), suggesting that patients admitted at the weekend had higher odds of mortality than those admitted during the week. Sub-group analyses suggest that the weekend effect remained when measures of case mix severity were included in the models (OR:1.06 95%CI:1.02-1.10), but that the weekend effect was not significant when clinical registry data was used (OR:1.03 95%CI: 0.98-1.09). Heterogeneity was high, which may affect generalisability.
conclusionsDespite high levels of heterogeneity, we found evidence of a weekend effect in the UK, even after accounting for severity of disease. Further work is required to examine other potential explanations for the "weekend effect" such as staffing levels and other organisational factors.
trial registrationPROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews -registration number: CRD42016041225 .
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