A new study conducted in Ontario has debunked the belief that performance of doctors while doing elective surgery suffers because of not getting sleep the night before. A previous research said that sleep-deprived physicians are a risk for patients.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine Monday, the study showed that there are very less chances for a patient to die as he undergoes an elective daytime procedure at the hands of a physician who worked between midnight and 7 am. The patient is not even likely to suffer complications or be readmitted to hospital.

The effectiveness of the treatment is almost similar for patients treated by either the doctor who worked between midnight and 7 am or the same fully rested doctor.

The study was conducted by researchers at Toronto's Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. For the study, the researchers looked into cases of nearly 39,000 patients who underwent one of 12 procedures at Toronto's Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. The procedures ranged from bypass and spinal surgery to hip and knee replacements. They were provided treatment by 1,448 different physicians.

Physicians who had provided overnight medical care treated half of the daytime patients. The same elective procedures from the same well-rested physicians were received by an equal number of patients.

The researchers deduced that the incidences of death, readmission or complication were similar between the two groups.

"Attending physicians have greater experience than trainees, which may compensate for decrements in performance so that clinical outcomes are not affected", said the study.