If your surgeon is a bit stressed, your surgery may be more successful

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-01-16 03:00

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Surgeons who are stressed out at the beginning of a procedure are more likely to produce a better outcome, according to international research. The team monitored the physical stress of 38 surgeons over nearly 800 surgeries using a heart rate monitor, and compared how stressed they were with how their patients fared following the surgery -  whether they had complications, spent longer in intensive care or died in the following month. The researchers say when the surgeon showed signs of stress in the first five minutes of a surgery, the patient was less likely to go on to have complications, however they were no more likely to get out of intensive care early and no less likely to die in the weeks after their procedure.