Surgical Guidelines and Sports Gameplans: How Data Inform Decision-Making

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.