Wednesday 29 May 2013

Friday operations

More misrepresentation in reporting statistics in the news media today! This time about the likelihood of dying after surgery at the end of the week.

I have just sent this letter to The Times:

To report that the 'risk of dying after operation soars towards the end of the week' (The Times, 29 May) is to distort the statistics that the  probability of dying after a Friday operation is 0.82% compared with 0.55% for a Monday. 

These results could be reported by saying that a patient has 99.18% and 99.45% chances of surviving Friday and Monday operations respectively. Both are extremely high chances and the survival rate for Mondays is only slightly better than that for Fridays. If I needed surgery I would be grateful to take either.


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