Operator Sleep Deprivation Does Not Adversely Affect PCI

(HealthDay News) –  Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) performed in the middle of the night does not impact the same operator’s ability to perform PCI the next day.

To investigate the impact of sleep deprivation on interventional cardiologists, Vitalie Crudu, MD, from the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, and colleagues reviewed all primary PCIs conducted from January 2005–December 2009 between 11pm–7am. All PCIs during the study period were performed by four staff interventionists. The sleep-deprived group included 167 PCIs performed the subsequent day by the same interventionist. The non-sleep-deprived group included 3,644 PCIs.

The researchers found that, in the sleep-deprived group, there were significantly more intraprocedural deaths (1.2 vs. 0.2%; P=0.04); however, after adjusting for potential confounders, the odds ratio was not significant (odds ratio, 6.83; 95% confidence interval, 0.66–39.63; P=0.11). In the non-sleep-deprived group, excessive bleeding at the arterial access site was more frequent (2.7 vs. 0%; P=0.02). No between-group differences were seen in combined safety or efficacy end points.

“In this small single-center study, we did not find evidence that middle-of-the-night procedures adversely affected safety or efficacy of procedures done the next day by the same operator. Evaluation of larger databases should be performed to exclude such an effect,” the authors write.

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