Relative Risk of Prolonged Operative Times From Inconsistent Surgical Teams: Reply

Excerpt

We thank Dr. Dexter for his comments on our article [1] about interpreting odds ratios, and we agree with him about the value of relative risk information. As pointed by Dr. Dexter, odds ratios can be an overestimator of relative risk, even though levels of statistical significance remain the same [2]. Dr. Dexter is correct in that our paper provided odds ratios, not relative risk, and therefore our paper’s discussion section contained overestimates of relative risk. Using the conversion formula provided by Zhang and Yu [2] and as suggested in Dr. Dexter’s letter, we calculated the adjusted relative risk. When compared cases with consistent surgical teams, the relative risk of cases by inconsistent teams for prolonged operative time, prolonged hospital stay, and 30-day hospital readmission was 1.37 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.15–1.61), 1.30 (95 % CI 1.15–1.46), and 1.36 (95 % CI 1.06–1.74), respectively. …