To the Editor: The article by Bellomo et al,1 with its alarmist conclusions, received a lot of media attention. However, the authors' methodology is flawed and their conclusions are unsupported by their data. They describe postoperative adverse events in a group of largely elderly patients (median age, 65.5 years) who stayed in hospital more than 48 hours after inpatient surgery. These selective criteria were used "to exclude patients having day surgery or minor procedures".
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