ArticleBMJ public health2025
Development of a new indicator of surgical burden using person-time-adjusted surgical volume: a cross-sectional regional analysis in Japan.
Article in BMJ public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Physical AI goes to the operating room: are we ready for the Surgical Data Factory?Annals of surgical treatment and research · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Surgical volume is widely used as an indicator to assess surgical burden in many areas; however, it has a risk of neglecting the differences of individual operations. Moreover, the characteristics of operations differ between rural and urban areas. Fewer but more varied operations are performed in rural settings than in urban settings. A new indicator, the person-time-adjusted surgical volume, was developed by integrating surgical volume, operative time and the surgeon's workforce in each operation. This innovative measure expands the use of surgical volume in healthcare strategies, providing a promising tool for evaluating the surgical workforce on a timely basis. Methods: The new indicator of surgical volume, person-time-adjusted surgical volume, was developed using weighted standard operative time and the standard number of surgeons. All statistical data were derived from three published sources. Rural and local city area data were grouped together as regional areas, on the prefectural basis (n=47) and compared with the data from the urban areas of the secondary medical area (n=48) in Japan. The surgical volume of gastrointestinal surgeries and surgeon density in each area was collected and analysed. All analyses used the person-time-adjusted surgical volume per surgeon to account for differences between medical areas. Results: A negative association was found between the person-time-adjusted surgical volume and surgeon density. Regional areas had more person-time-adjusted surgical volume per surgeon than urban areas. A decrease in surgeon density resulted in an increased rate of person-time adjusted surgical volume in regional areas, which was a 10-fold increase in person-time-adjusted surgical volume per surgeon with decreasing surgeon density in regional areas. This suggests that surgeons in rural and local areas have a higher risk of overworking or burnout than those in urban areas. Conclusion: The person-time-adjusted surgical volume is useful for evaluating surgical burden and visualising the gap in underprivileged areas.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.