It is not the 1st of April so presumably this “lunatic science” about the effects of a waning full moon on improved results after surgery – taking “lunatic” in its proper sense of moon-sick – is not just fantasy!
The message is clear. Schedule any cardiac surgery you may need during a waning full moon! But it does go against previous “lunatic belief” expressed by a UK politician as recently as 2009. Tredinnick, a Conservative MP, is a supporter of astrology especially the use of it in medical practice!
In October 2009, British politician David Tredinnick asserted that during a full moon “[s]urgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.”.
The belief that there is correlation between specific stages of the Earth’s lunar cycle and behavior in animals including human beings that cannot simply be explained by variation in light levels. There is no scientific reason to expect this to be the case and, in spite of numerous studies, no significant lunar effect on human behaviour has been established. Scholars debunking the effect sometimes refer to it as the Transylvanian hypothesis or the Transylvanian effect to emphasise its fanciful nature – Wikipedia
One wonders of course whether the effects of the full moon are affecting the surgeons or the patients.
This “study” – not funded- from the Rhode Island Hospital has just been published:
J. H. Shuhaiber, J. L. Fava, T. Shin, N. Dobrilovic, A. Ehsan, A. Bert, F. Sellke. The influence of seasons and lunar cycle on hospital outcomes following ascending aortic dissection repair. Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/icvts/ivt299
Franke Sellke
Waning and full moon cycles impact length of stay, mortality
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – If you need cardiac surgery in the future, aortic dissection in particular, reach for the moon. Or at least try to schedule your surgery around its cycle. According to a study at Rhode Island Hospital, acute aortic dissection (AAD) repair performed in the waning full moon appears to reduce the odds of death, and a full moon was associated with shorter length of stay (LOS). The study is published online in advance of print in the journal Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery.
The purpose of the study was to assess the effect of natural time variations of both the season and the lunar cycle phase on hospital survival and length of stay (number of days a patient is in the hospital) following acute aortic dissection repair.
“While there has been previous research of seasonal impacts on cardiovascular disease, there has not been any data about the effect of the lunar cycles on cardiac cases, until now,” said senior author Frank Sellke, M.D., chief of cardiothoracic surgery and co-director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Rhode Island, The Miriam and Newport hospitals. “We focused the study on patients having aortic dissection and found that the odds of dying following this procedure were greatly reduced during the waning full moon, and that length of stay was also reduced during the full moon.”
Moon struck?
Researchers studied the relationship of lunar cycles and seasonal variation on two surgical groups: Group A: Patients having repair of ascending aortic dissection, and Group B: Patients having aortic dissection and either aortic valve surgery, coronary bypass surgery, or both. They also studied the relationship of the lunar cycle on patients’ length of stay. The study indicates that aortic dissection performed during the full moon phase had a significantly shorter length of stay than two other moon phases – 10 days for the full moon cycle vs. 14 days for the other phases.
Werewolves and vampires next ? In Rhode Island?
More fun from Wikipedia:
Fertility and blood loss
It is widely believed that the moon has a relationship with fertility due to the corresponding human menstrual cycle, which averages 28 days. However, no connection between lunar rhythms and menstrual onset has been conclusively shown to exist, and the similarity in length between the two cycles is most likely coincidental.
It is sometimes claimed that surgeons used to refuse to operate on the full moon because of the increased risk of death of the patient through blood loss. In October 2009, British politician David Tredinnick asserted that during a full moon “[s]urgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.”. A spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons said they would “laugh their heads off” at the suggestion they could not operate at the full moon.
Law and order
Senior police officers in Brighton announced in June 2007 that they were planning to deploy more officers over the summer to counter trouble they believe is linked to the lunar cycle. Similarly, police in Ohio and Kentucky have blamed temporary rises in crime on the full moon. In January 2008, New Zealand’s Justice Minister Annette King suggested that a spate of stabbings in the country could have been caused by the lunar cycle.
Politics
It was suggested that the full moon might have influenced voter behavior in the US 2000 presidential election.
Tags: Frank Sellke, Lunar effects, Lunar phase, lunar science, lunatic science, Moon, Rhode Island Hospital
The k2p blog 
July 26, 2013 at 11:27 am
[…] sickness is becoming all the rage. Hot on the heels of the report that cardiac surgery results are affected by the phases of the moon comes this study showing that […]