Surgery and Sports: How Data Inform Decision Making When the Stakes are High

Surgery and Sports are deeply technical and analytical experiences shaped by complex data. In surgery, treatment guidelines are created through evidence-based methods, while in sports, gameplans are derived from film-review, statistics and scouting reports. Despite the wealth of data available to surgeons and sports teams, surgical guidelines and sports gameplans are not always followed. Decision-making often relies on something that is not captured in the numbers, and emotions often compete with evidence. Surgery can serve as a lens for sports teams to understand how data influences high-stakes decisions and ways to effectively integrate emotion with evidence.