Q: Recently, my husband was admitted into the hospital for emergency surgery on a Friday. He's fine now, but things didn't go well at the time and he was readmitted a week after he was released. I think it was because the B team was working over the weekend. Any truth in that? - Cheryl W., Oakland, California
A: We can't comment on your husband's situation, but studies find that in the U.S. patients who had surgery on weekends experienced longer hospital stays and more-frequent readmissions. That's called the "weekend effect." Fortunately, that is changing, according to researchers from Loyola University.
We used to think that staffing problems and, as you called it, the presence of the B team was to blame. But after looking at 127,221 patients at 166 hospitals who underwent urgent general surgical procedures, the researchers found that the biggest difference between hospitals that overcame the weekend effect and hospitals that didn't was the availability of electronic medical records - something that is now being required by the Affordable Care Act.
Hospitals where doctors had access to electronic records for patients they had never seen before did a better job of taking care of the patients and reduced the readmission rate! True, other factors, such as a higher nurse-to-bed ratio, the presence of social workers and availability of CT scans, help assure better patient outcomes on the weekends. But by far the biggest difference came from having electronic medical records.
The Affordable Care Act says: "Using electronic health records will reduce paperwork and administrative burdens, cut costs, reduce medical errors and most importantly, improve the quality of care." And they do! And more and more hospitals are getting in line, since the government can withhold Medicare payments to hospitals who don't comply.
So if you have to go into the hospital for surgery on the weekend and you have a choice of where you go, try to select a facility that has your medical record available to everyone from emergency-room nurses to the surgeon who will do your procedure.
Q: They are doing the weirdest transplants these days. Several folks have gotten new faces, there was talk of doing a head, and now there's news about a successful penis transplant. How is that possible? - Danny M., Houston
A: Transplantation surgeries have become incredibly refined since the first successful organ transplant (a kidney) in 1954 and Dr. Christiaan Barnard's first successful heart transplant in 1967. (Dr. Oz has performed hundreds of successful heart transplants.) But the recent penis transplant, done using complex microsurgery to connect small blood vessels and nerves, didn't just save a life, it made a new life - the patient and his girlfriend report that they're going to have a baby!
A team of surgeons led by Dr. Andre van der Merwe in Cape Town, South Africa, used the same microscopic surgery techniques that are used to do a face transplant. The resounding success of this surgery - full sexual functioning was restored - is a milestone. Now penis transplants are a real option for any man who is born without one (aphallia) or loses a penis to cancer, accident, gunshot or explosion.
This recently reported surgery was necessary because the young man had a botched ritual circumcision that became gangrenous. Tens of thousands of young men undergo ritual circumcisions every year, according to the South African Medical Association. And, says CBS news, every year South African doctors have to do about 250 amputations.
Dr. van der Merwe and his team are now developing a penile transplant procedure that can be used by surgeons and hospitals across the country, and the world. The U.S. government is taking a very close look at this, as well as at face transplant surgeries, to help injured vets. And we can expect more exciting transplant developments in the near future. Last October, a woman in Sweden gave birth after receiving a womb transplant!
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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