Surgeon fatigue: impact of case order on perioperative parameters and patient outcomes

We tested the hypothesis that surgeon fatigue results in worse outcomes for laparoscopic and robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy, and percutaneous nephrolithotomy by comparing outcomes of sequentially scheduled procedures.

We identified days when 2 procedures of the same type were performed by the same surgeon, including 72 laparoscopic and 340 robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomies, and 110 percutaneous nephrolithotomies. Clinical data and outcomes were compared.

For percutaneous nephrolithotomy multiple access (16% vs 9%, p = 0.2), transfusion (3.6% vs 5.4%, p = 0.5), complication (20% vs 18%, p = 0.5), residual fragment (53% vs 45%, p = 0.3), second look (38% vs 35% p = 0.4) and stone-free (86% vs 89% p = 0.3) rates did not differ for the first and second procedures. For laparoscopic prostatectomy nerve sparing (100% vs 97.1%, p = 0.5), operative complications (0% vs 0%, p = 0.7), drain requirement (36% vs 42%, p = 0.6) and lymphadenectomy (13.5% vs 25.7%, p = 0.16) rates were comparable. Positive margins (19.4% vs 36.1% p = 0.08), continence (66.7% vs 66.7%, p = 0.9), potency (58.3% vs 52.8%, p = 0.76) and prostate specific antigen recurrence (10.8% vs 20%, p = 0.45) did not significantly differ for the first and second procedures. For robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy operative complications (3% vs 3.5%, p = 0.8), drain requirement (7.7% vs 9.8%, p = 0.5), positive margins (41.7% vs 39.3%, p = 0.37), continence (78.6% vs 84.4%, p = 0.12), potency (51% vs 50%, p = 0.15) and prostate specific antigen recurrence (9.5% vs 11.6%, p = 0.2) did not significantly differ. Nerve sparing was more common in the second case cohort (86.9% vs 75.7%, p = 0.03).

Despite concern that surgeon fatigue may impact outcomes, our data suggests that performing several complex urological procedures consecutively is not associated with worse outcomes.