Association of overlapping surgery with patient outcomes in a large series of neurosurgical cases.

Overlapping surgery refers to the practice of surgeons scheduling two procedures performed on different patients concurrently. This practice has raised safety concerns in light of news investigations, which prompted a government inquiry into concurrent surgery policies. This single-center retrospective study of 2275 neurosurgery cases at an academic medical center compared overlapping to nonoverlapping procedures. The majority of surgeries were overlapping, and rates of morbidity and mortality did not differ between overlapping and nonoverlapping cases. These findings suggest that overlapping surgery can be conducted safely.