ArticleAnnals of surgery open : perspectives of surgical history, education, and clinical approaches2024
Superstition in Surgery: A Population-Based Cohort Study to Assess the Association Between Surgery on Friday the 13th and Postoperative Outcomes.
Article in Annals of surgery open : perspectives of surgical history, education, and clinical approaches, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Influence of Food Superstition (Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC) on the On-Duty Surgeon's Workload: A Multiple-Armed Randomized Controlled Trial.Annals of surgery open : perspectives of surgical history, education, and clinical approaches · 2026Article
- What Do Patients Know About Anesthesia and Anesthesiologists?Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Superstition in arthroplasty: does a suspicious size or surgery date have a higher revision rate? A Dutch arthroplasty register study.Acta orthopaedica · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: We sought to examine whether the outcomes of patients who receive a surgical procedure on Friday the 13th differ from patients who receive surgery on flanking Fridays. Background: Numerous studies have demonstrated that increased anxiety from the provider or patient around the time of surgery can lead to worse outcomes. Superstitious patients often express significant concern and anxiety when undergoing a surgical procedure on Friday the 13th. Methods: A retrospective, population-based cohort study of 19,747 adults undergoing 1 of 25 common surgical procedures on Friday the 13th or flanking control Fridays (Friday the 6th and Friday the 20th) between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2019, with 1 year of follow-up. The main outcomes included death, readmission, and complications at 30 days (short-term), 90 days (intermediate-term), and 1 year (long-term). Results: A total of 7,349 (37.2%) underwent surgery on Friday the 13th, and 12,398 (62.8%) underwent surgery on a flanking Friday during the study period. Patient characteristics were similar between the 2 groups. We found no evidence that patients receiving surgery on Friday the 13th group were more likely to experience the composite primary outcome at 30 days [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.02 (95% CI = 0.94-1.09)], 90 days [aOR = 0.97 (95% CI = 0.90-1.04)], and 1 year [aOR = 0.99 (95% CI = 0.94-1.04)] after surgery. Conclusion: Patients receiving surgery on Friday the 13th do not appear to fare worse than those treated on ordinary Fridays with respect to the composite outcome.
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