ArticleWorld journal of emergency surgery : WJES2022
The weekend effect on the provision of Emergency Surgery before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: case-control analysis of a retrospective multicentre database.
Article in World journal of emergency surgery : WJES, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experience of the endoscopist mediates the association between weekend effect with rebleeding after endoscopic treatment for Dieulafoy's lesion.Surgical endoscopy · 2026Article
- Is there a "weekend effect" in adenoma detection rate?A single-center retrospective study.PloS one · 2026Article
- Does the weekend matter? evaluating the weekend effect on pregnancy outcomes in first-cycle fresh IVF/ICSI embryo transfers: a retrospective study.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2025Article
- Prognostic factors and predictive models in hot gallbladder surgery: A prospective observational study in a high-volume center.Annals of hepato-biliary-pancreatic surgery · 2024Article
- Is it possible to predict the severity of acute appendicitis? Reliability of predictive models based on easily available blood variables.World journal of emergency surgery : WJES · 2023Article
- Article
- Bariatric surgery: to bleed or not to bleed? This is the question.BMC surgery · 2022Article
- Emergency Surgery for Colon Diseases in Elderly Patients-Analysis of Complications, and Postoperative Course.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThe concept of "weekend effect", that is, substandard healthcare during weekends, has never been fully demonstrated, and the different outcomes of emergency surgical patients admitted during weekends may be due to different conditions at admission and/or different therapeutic approaches. Aim of this international audit was to identify any change of pattern of emergency surgical admissions and treatments during weekends. Furthermore, we aimed at investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the alleged "weekend effect".
methodsThe database of the CovidICE-International Study was interrogated, and 6263 patients were selected for analysis. Non-trauma, 18+ yo patients admitted to 45 emergency surgery units in Europe in the months of March-April 2019 and March-April 2020 were included. Demographic and clinical data were anonymised by the referring centre and centrally collected and analysed with a statistical package. This study was endorsed by the Association of Italian Hospital Surgeons (ACOI) and the World Society of Emergency Surgery (WSES).
resultsThree-quarters of patients have been admitted during workdays and only 25.7% during weekends. There was no difference in the distribution of gender, age, ASA class and diagnosis during weekends with respect to workdays. The first wave of the COVID pandemic caused a one-third reduction of emergency surgical admission both during workdays and weekends but did not change the relation between workdays and weekends. The treatment was more often surgical for patients admitted during weekends, with no difference between 2019 and 2020, and procedures were more often performed by open surgery. However, patients admitted during weekends had a threefold increased risk of laparoscopy-to-laparotomy conversion (1% vs. 3.4%). Hospital stay was longer in patients admitted during weekends, but those patients had a lower risk of readmission. There was no difference of the rate of rescue surgery between weekends and workdays. Subgroup analysis revealed that interventional procedures for hot gallbladder were less frequently performed on patients admitted during weekends.
conclusionsOur analysis revealed that demographic and clinical profiles of patients admitted during weekends do not differ significantly from workdays, but the therapeutic strategy may be different probably due to lack of availability of services and skillsets during weekends. The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic did not impact on this difference.
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