Do Surgeons Take A Break To Eat And Go To The WC During Long Surgeries?

When surgeons perform especially long surgeries, say, 12 hours or more, do they take breaks? How are things like eating handled?

I'm sure they have to eat to keep their blood sugar up, and how about the bathroom? Do they just get to a good stopping point and say, "okay guys I gotta go see a man about a horse." and take off for a few?
Do their hands dry out from all of the scrubbing in/out?

This question was originally posted on Quora:

Answer 1 by Vinay Kumaran, Liver Transplant Surgeon

The longest operations I've been involved in have been living donor liver transplants and intestinal and multivisceral transplants. While an uneventful operation with favorable anatomy may take only 8-10 hours, a complex one may take up to 18 hours. In most cases there is a break in between. With two teams working simultaneously (donor and recipient teams), it is common for one team to take a break and wait for the other team to catch up. This is an opportunity to visit the restroom and have a sandwich and coffee. That being said, I have operated continuously for over 12 hours at times. During complex surgery, the body is at a high level of functioning with constant secretion of adrenaline and steroids etc. Low sugars do not happen nor does the bladder get full while functioning at that level but certainly these things catch up around the time the technical parts of the operation are done and it's time to close.

Answer 2 by Anonymous

Long surgeries are normally long because they are many many parts. They don't just have one guy doing everything. They might have a head surgeon that directs everything but it's not like he is personally cutting for 12 hours straight he can leave while someone is doing some stitches or something.

I'm a medical student and have been in on longer surgeries. My most recent one was a Whipple surgery that lasted about 8 hours. We took a 15 minute break in the middle to grab some food. On other occasions, even with shorter surgeries, the surgeon left to use the restroom. It isn't too much of a hassle to rescrub.

I also assisted on an 8 hr cleft lip surgery with a plastic surgeon. We had to go to the bathroom and quickly went about 3/4 through. I ate a protein bar and then scrubbed back in. During the surgery, all the nurses and anesthesiologist rotated out (the surgery went over their shift). The residents assisting never left (they are tough man!)

Usually the main surgeon will do the whole surgery, since they know how they got there, but support staff take breaks.

If the surgeon was sick or had diarrhea, they would just have to reassign or delay the surgery. It is a very physically demanding job!

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I get asked this question a lot by my friends and patients. The answer in our country is an almost no. So the longest surgery I ve been in is a 36 hour surgery fixing back an amputee hand back of a senior doctor along with our hand surgeon, that's the only time I remember taking a break in between a surgery. Orthopaedic Oncology surgery lasts about 20hours and I don't remember taking a break. But this was during residency when I was younger and I thought my body was doing its wonder while young. But even now somehow hunger and nature's call do not creep up during a surgery. The body has a system for hunger, nature's calls, sleep (parasympathetic nervous system) and this system is deactivated when we are operating. And the other system which is ingrained in us, the flight or fight reflexes (sympathetic nervous system), get activated and our body is able to push without needing to refule or dump. When we are operating, especially if we are the primary surgeon, we do not feel the urge to take a break until the crucial parts of the surgery are done. The human body is a brilliant work of art and science.