Not sleeping enough before surgery may increase pain during recovery

Not getting enough sleep before having surgery may increase post-operative pain. This suggests that improvements in recovery time may require good amounts of sleep not just after an operation but also before going under the knife.

Maíra Bicca at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and her colleagues assessed post-operative pain outcomes in sleep-deprived mice to determine how sleep can affect the healing process.

The researchers kept six mice from falling asleep for 9 hours before surgery with several distractions. They introduced new…