A few days ago we had a full moon. A lengthy discussion about the effect of a full moon on hospital admissions took place on Twitter.
Many papers say admissions increase and odd things happen, and many others have found there is no relationship between the phases of the moon and anything that goes on in hospitals.
Someone sent me a link to a paper that a lot of devotees of astrology like to quote. It's called "The influence of the full moon on the number of admissions related to gastrointestinal bleeding," and it appeared in the International Journal of Nursing Practice in 2004.
The authors looked at the records of 447 consecutive patients admitted with G.I. bleeding to a hospital in Barcelona over two years. There were 26 (an average of 1.04 ± 0.93) admissions during 25 days of the full moon and 421 (0.59 ± 0.78) admissions on the other 713 days where the moon was not full, P = 0.007.
The authors concluded "the number of admissions related to gastrointestinal hemorrhage in our bleeding unit increases during [a] full moon. However, the wide variation in the number of admissions throughout the lunar cycle, as well as the possible influence of other external factors such as atmospheric phenomena, and concomitant with the lunar cycle, could limit analysis and interpretation of the results."
Jean-Luc Margot, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, published a detailed critique of the of the above paper in the journal Nursing Research. He pointed out a number of problems. I will share a simple one.
This figure represents the number of admissions for G.I. bleeding plotted against the days of the lunar cycle.
Here is the figure again with some of the other days highlighted.
Of course another major problem is even if there were significantly more admissions on the day of the full moon, the paper does not prove that the moon was the cause.
Maybe the full moon does affect hospital admissions, but the astrologers won't convince me without a lot better study than the one from Spain.
12 comments:
Maybe the increase in gastrointestinal bleeding is from werewolves attacks.
As a critical care nurse for 40+ years, trust me, full moons cause dread in ICUs. Especially if it is a Friday, payday, and the 13th. All hell breaks loose!
Fran, you may be right,
Ann, you listed too many confounding variables. :-)
When the moon is full,it is easier to see the sign that says
"Hospital ... turn left".
I never thought of that.
While the belief that days around a full moon increases bleeding risks the number of admissions to hospital is a poor secondary indicator depending as much on the admitting personnel as the symptoms. For many supposed moon related phenomena the days around the dark of the moon supposedly shows an increase, albeit lesser, as well. So those analyses that compare Full Moon numbers VS the rest of the month may mask anything statistically significant.
Somewhat related - I do believe barometric pressure influences the risk of kidney stones and gout - and there may be some physical principles to support this, but I have not looked for hard data.
Howard, what you said.
Anon, I have not seen anything published about that. It would be a tough thing to study. Lots of potential confounders.
Anonymous Europe: I just got off my 24 hour shift. I am usually in the outpatient unit during on call. At fullmoon people just go crazy...
Well, I guess that settles it. :-)
Summary of published studies investigating moon phase and behavior: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/moon.html
Anon, thanks for the comprehensive summary of the research on this topic. I hope everyone takes a look at it.
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