TY - JOUR T1 - Higher mortality for weekend admissions: quality of care or selection bias? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1755 LP - 1756 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00018315 VL - 45 IS - 6 AU - Chi Chiu Leung AU - Lai Bun Tai AU - Irene Yip AU - Cheuk Ming Tam Y1 - 2015/06/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/45/6/1755.abstract N2 - We read the article by Suissa et al. [1] with great interest. The authors retrospectively looked at all hospitalisations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbation or pneumonia during the period 1990–2007 from the healthcare databases of Quebec, Canada, and found higher mortality for weekend, but not Friday, admissions, relative to Monday–Thursday admissions. Similar weekend effects were observed for multiple medical conditions across different settings [2–4]. The increased mortality for weekend acute admissions is often attributed to lower quality of care during the weekend even though it could be equally plausible that sicker people came into hospital at weekends [2]. The rhythm of human activity across the week might impact the observed increase in weekend hospital mortality http://ow.ly/KQm2g ER -