If you have any say, you might want to avoid scheduling your next surgery on a Friday.

The most comprehensive analysis of what happens to patients who have surgery on Fridays versus Mondays, published this month in JAMA by more than a dozen US and Canadian researchers, is unequivocal: The people who underwent all kinds of procedures before the weekend suffered on average more short-term, medium-term, and long-term complications than people who went under the knife after the weekend was over.

The study was based in Ontario and included more than 450,000 patients who received one of the 25 most common surgeries between 2007 and 2019. Canada’s universal health care program allowed the researchers to more easily track patients over time and it eliminated finances as a variable in how patients fared.

Previous studies have generally found the same effects across different types of health systems: One

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