Are sleep-deprived doctors likely to mess up surgery? The answer will surprise you

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According to a new study, patients with surgeons who are sleep-deprived are still in good hands.

In the first large study of its kind on the effects of sleep deprivation on doctors, the research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that physicians that have subpar sleep are able to perform just as well as their well-rested colleagues.

For the study, the researchers looked at more than 35,000 patients who are to have daytime surgeries in Ontario Canada. They then compared it to an administrative database where patients were paired with patients who had undergone surgery after a night shift and after a day off from the same surgeon. According to the report by US News & World Report, nearly 1,500 surgeon-patients were compared and researchers did a follow-up 30 days after the operations.

The results of the study revealed that sleep-deprived surgeons were just as capable as their colleagues who were fully rested. According to the outlet, the researchers found very little difference in the patient outcomes of the surgeons whether they had or did not have proper sleep.

"Sleep deprivation affects us all—the laboratory data is clear on that—so it did surprise me that when we looked at a broad range of physicians and evaluated the outcome of a large variety of procedures, we found no difference in the outcomes for patients whether their doctor performed overnight work the night before or did not," said Dr. Nancy Baxter, senior author and chief of general surgery at St. Michael's Hospital, via Yahoo News.

However, Baxter told Yahoo that the study didn't show how much sleep the doctors got during on-call nights, a limitation on the researched data.

"Some of them may not have lost a lot of sleep," she explained. "So we looked at a subset of physicians who probably got very little sleep - those who performed at least two procedures overnight - and even then we didn't find any major effect."

According to Baxter, the results of the study may not be so surprising at all since experienced surgeons can deal with lack of sleep and can do their job properly even if they're exhausted. It's also because "surgeons tend to be people who deal better with lack of sleep than other physicians," according to a report by Reuters.

For patients who are worried or anxious if they are under the care of a surgeon who was on-call the night before, Baxter told the outlet that it is "probably something they don't need to worry about."