Overlapping surgery in orthopaedics: a review of efficacy, surgical costs, surgical outcomes, and patient safety.
Overlapping surgeries, where one attending surgeon supervises two surgeries with noncritical portions occurring simultaneously, are generally considered as safe as non-overlapping surgeries. This review identified 11 studies into safety outcomes of overlapping orthopedic surgeries involving 34,494 overlapping surgeries. Consistent with prior research, although overlapping surgeries tended to have increased surgical times, short-term outcomes were no different than non-overlapping; one study showed increased risk for adverse events at one year. The authors suggest future research into overlapping robotic-assisted surgeries.