Welcome to The Pulse, a weekly roundup of health-focused news. Each Thursday, we bring you updates on health policy, community surveys, new clinical studies, programs and services in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Got a tip or story idea? Email me at emily@cardinalnews.org.
Task-switching can have a negative impact on surgical outcomes, researcher finds
Switching between tasks is a routine part of modern life. But measuring how it affects the brain is difficult, according to a researcher at Virginia Tech.
There is one setting where researchers can measure it precisely: organ transplant surgery.
Jiayi Liu, an assistant professor in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, reviewed more than 300,000 transplant surgeries performed between 2007 and 2019. She used data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, a national organ transplant database, to study how task-switching affects outcomes.
Her findings show that when surgeons switch between different types of organ transplants in a single day, patient mortality rates one-year post operation increase by 14.8%.
The analysis also found that surgeons switch between organ types in more than 15% of cases, suggesting that task-switching is a routine part of surgical practice.
These findings have implications beyond healthcare, according to the press release from Virginia Tech. Task-switching is common across many professions, but its cognitive effects are hard to measure. Organ transplants provide a rare, controlled environment where researchers can directly observe how switching tasks impacts performance.
Liu found that switching between similar procedures had little effect. However, the risk increased when surgeons shifted to a fundamentally different type of transplant that requires a different approach.
The surgeon’s recovery time also mattered. Even a single day between procedures significantly improved outcomes.
“We found a striking pattern. When a switch occurs on the same day, the mortality rate for those patients rises sharply — from about 4.5 percent to 7.2 percent,” Liu said in the press release. “If you have even a night to rest between surgeries, the switching cost is much lower, and with two days in between, the effect is essentially gone.”
More experienced surgeons saw smaller performance declines, suggesting that experience can help offset some of the risks associated with task switching.
Safety-net dental center receives grant, sets ribbon-cutting ceremony
The Appalachian Power Foundation awarded $50,000 to the Appalachian Highlands Community Dental Center to support an expansion at the Abingdon facility.
The safety-net dental center provides services to uninsured, underinsured and Medicaid patients. Leaders say the funding will increase capacity, reduce wait times and improve access to preventive and urgent dental services, according to a press release from the Appalachian Highlands Community Dental Charities, the philanthropic arm of the dental center.
The Appalachian Power Foundation is funded through shareholder dollars, focusing on initiatives related to science, technology, engineering, math and community needs.
“Access to quality dental care should never depend on where you live or whether you have insurance,” Brian Abraham, president and COO of Appalachian Power, said in a press release. “This investment reflects our commitment to strengthening the health and well-being of the communities we serve. By supporting the Appalachian Highlands Community Dental Center’s expansion, we’re helping ensure more families across Southwest Virginia can receive the care they need to live healthier, more confident lives.”
The dental center will mark the expansion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 21. The project adds seven dental chairs, bringing the clinic’s total to 21 treatment spaces.
