Q21 - In response to high mortality

[yusangmin]

can you please explain what this means? i dont even know what the freaking stimulus is saying exactly..ok so in responsse to the
higher mortality rates...the hospital only did emergency procedures....
then mortality fell...however the rate went back up when they went back to elective surgery...thus he concludes that before the five week period the RISKS had been unnecessarily incurred?

i have no idea what the freak the conclusion is coming to...i often have this problem with LSAT questions where i dont really know what the hell the stimulus is saying...this doesnt seem to be particularily abstract or hard question but i dont even really understand exactly what the author derived from the premise or whatever.

please help!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Let's attack the argument because there's a hole in it so big you could drive a truck through it. But of course we're at #21 (a typically more clever part of the test!) so we should be careful.

The argument's conclusion is that "before the five-week period, the risks of elective surgery had been incurred unnecessarily often." Remember elective surgery is "surgery that can be postponed." But how long can one keep pushing back surgery? Eventually, you have to face the procedure and take care of whatever it is that's causing the problem. Many of these "elective procedures" may actually be necessary to take care of, but could be postponed to a later date.

We'd like the correct answer to somehow support the notion that the elective surgeries had not been incurred unnecessarily often. Answer choice (A) tells us that it wasn't unnecessary because the supposedly "elective" procedures would have been eventually required.

(A) undermines the argument's conclusion by showing that risks of elective surgery were not unnecessarily incurred. They were risks that would have to be faced at some point or another.
(B) is irrelevant. Whether the patients were informed does not indicate whether the risks of elective surgery were unnecessarily incurred.
(C) does not tell us about elective procedures but rather surgical procedures and is therefore out of scope.
(D) is close but not quite. Elective surgery could be less risky than emergency surgery and yet the area hospitals could have incurred the risks of that elective surgery unnecessarily.
(E) tends to support the conclusion that the risks were incurred unnecessarily.

Does that help?

[willaminic]

Let's attack the argument because there's a hole in it so big you could drive a truck through it. But of course we're at #21 (a typically more clever part of the test!) so we should be careful.

The argument's conclusion is that "before the five-week period, the risks of elective surgery had been incurred unnecessarily often." Remember elective surgery is "surgery that can be postponed." But how long can one keep pushing back surgery? Eventually, you have to face the procedure and take care of whatever it is that's causing the problem. Many of these "elective procedures" may actually be necessary to take care of, but could be postponed to a later date.

We'd like the correct answer to somehow support the notion that the elective surgeries had not been incurred unnecessarily often. Answer choice (A) tells us that it wasn't unnecessary because the supposedly "elective" procedures would have been eventually required.

(A) undermines the argument's conclusion by showing that risks of elective surgery were not unnecessarily incurred. They were risks that would have to be faced at some point or another.
(B) is irrelevant. Whether the patients were informed does not indicate whether the risks of elective surgery were unnecessarily incurred.
(C) does not tell us about elective procedures but rather surgical procedures and is therefore out of scope.
(D) is close but not quite. Elective surgery could be less risky than emergency surgery and yet the area hospitals could have incurred the risks of that elective surgery unnecessarily.
(E) tends to support the conclusion that the risks were incurred unnecessarily.

Does that help?

i am still confused by this question, the core of the argument is that when elective surgery was resumed, the number of death goes up, so then it is said by the conclusion that the risk of the elective surgery incurred unnecessary...but A seems just saying we shouldnt delay it, but it has nothing to do with the conclusion in the context of the five -week period? Please correct me , i am so confused by this one....

[chike_eze]

i am still confused by this question, the core of the argument is that when elective surgery was resumed, the number of death goes up, so then it is said by the conclusion that the risk of the elective surgery incurred unnecessary...but A seems just saying we shouldnt delay it, but it has nothing to do with the conclusion in the context of the five -week period? Please correct me , i am so confused by this one....

Argument: During the 5 week period that elective surgery was stopped, mortality decreased one-third. Therefore, prior to the 5 week period, performing elective surgery was often unnecessarily risky.

(A) If those elective surgeries were not performed prior to the 5 week period, the risk of mortality would have increased (with time) for those patients.

This is saying that even though the surgeries were elective, the timing of those surgeries were critical to the long term survival of the patients. This weakens the conclusion that it was often "unnecessarily risky".
> (A) says it would have been more risky to do it later. This does not destroy the argument, however, it weakens it.

[xbig_bangx]

Let's attack the argument because there's a hole in it so big you could drive a truck through it. But of course we're at #21 (a typically more clever part of the test!) so we should be careful.

The argument's conclusion is that "before the five-week period, the risks of elective surgery had been incurred unnecessarily often." Remember elective surgery is "surgery that can be postponed." But how long can one keep pushing back surgery? Eventually, you have to face the procedure and take care of whatever it is that's causing the problem. Many of these "elective procedures" may actually be necessary to take care of, but could be postponed to a later date.

We'd like the correct answer to somehow support the notion that the elective surgeries had not been incurred unnecessarily often. Answer choice (A) tells us that it wasn't unnecessary because the supposedly "elective" procedures would have been eventually required.

(A) undermines the argument's conclusion by showing that risks of elective surgery were not unnecessarily incurred. They were risks that would have to be faced at some point or another.
(B) is irrelevant. Whether the patients were informed does not indicate whether the risks of elective surgery were unnecessarily incurred.
(C) does not tell us about elective procedures but rather surgical procedures and is therefore out of scope.
(D) is close but not quite. Elective surgery could be less risky than emergency surgery and yet the area hospitals could have incurred the risks of that elective surgery unnecessarily.
(E) tends to support the conclusion that the risks were incurred unnecessarily.

Does that help?

So (A) doesn't response to whether the risk was incurred before the five week period, rather it contests as to whether the risk was "unecessarily incurred"?

I had a "huh?" moment when reading the stimulus. It feels like this is one of the few times when LSAC tried the "If the moon is made out of cheese, then Santa Clause isn't real"; the conclusion follows the premise unexptedly, perhaps too unexptedly that it doesn't seem to follow at all.

Just one more point: in the conclusion it said "...before the five-week period...". Shouldn't it be "[during/because of] the five-week period"? Otherwise I don't understand how it follows from the premise that "the risks of elective surgery had been incurred" before the five-week period.

Thank you.

[xbig_bangx]

Oh I think I understand now: The argument is trying to attributing the high mortality to elective surgery that happened prior to the five-week period. How does it do that? By singling out a period in which no elective surgery was involved, namely the five-week period, and in which mortality dropped. Now what's tricky about this conclusion is that, by common sense, it could've been applied to just elective surgery, be it prior or after the five-week period, but it used only the before five-week. Furthermore, rather than stating high mortality was in someway connected to elective surgery, which is what I expected it to do, the conclusion added a new element of "risks of elective surgery", hence opening a big gap and confused me. (

[Mab6q]

I see how A is clearly the winner here but would we really classify E as a strengthener? Not sure what affect it has on the argument as it does not mention why those procedures were done.

[maryadkins]

I agree. I'd call (E) irrelevant. We don't know what kind of procedures it's talking about it, and it's talking about what happens AFTER them.

[yunjh2725]

I am still confused as to how one can answer about the resumption of higher number of deaths.

I get that Answer A weakens the unnecessary risk incurred but how will it answer the mystery of the rise of deaths when elective surgery resumed. I mean it is a fact that more deaths happened with the resumption of elective surgeries.
Even if the hospitals could no longer delay surgeries, the fact that these elective surgeries were operated but failed to save the patients (since more deaths happened) certainly incurs unnecessary deaths. If they had not performed elective surgeries, they may have allowed the patients to live a little longer despite the dangerous risks of not having the surgery... What's better, chance of dying with elective surgeries (although it can save you, but the premise said more deaths occurred with more elective surgeries) or living at least a little longer by forgoing the surgery? I would say the latter, so choosing the former does incur unnecessary risk.

Do I even make sense? Help?

I chose C because I thought to weaken the conclusion that elective surgery was at fault for causing more deaths, there must be other causes to this higher death: it was just that more surgeries were preformed, so more surgeries -> more deaths.

[haeeunjee]

I am still confused as to how one can answer about the resumption of higher number of deaths.

I get that Answer A weakens the unnecessary risk incurred but how will it answer the mystery of the rise of deaths when elective surgery resumed. I mean it is a fact that more deaths happened with the resumption of elective surgeries.
Even if the hospitals could no longer delay surgeries, the fact that these elective surgeries were operated but failed to save the patients (since more deaths happened) certainly incurs unnecessary deaths. If they had not performed elective surgeries, they may have allowed the patients to live a little longer despite the dangerous risks of not having the surgery... What's better, chance of dying with elective surgeries (although it can save you, but the premise said more deaths occurred with more elective surgeries) or living at least a little longer by forgoing the surgery? I would say the latter, so choosing the former does incur unnecessary risk.

"I mean it is a fact that more deaths happened with the resumption of elective surgeries." Yes, but don't assume that those who died were because of elective surgeries. That's a classic correlation/causation fallacy, and that's actually what the author of this stimulus is committing.

CONSIDER: What if the majority of deaths that accounted for the rise/fall of mortality rates were due to emergency deaths. Morality falls as doctors and nurses ONLY focus on emergency surgeries and save a bunch of people. After the suspension on elective surgery is lifted, the time and efforts of doctors are split between elective and emergency surgery. The morality rate rising doesn't have to be an increase in people dying due to elective surgery, but rather to emergency surgery WHEN it happens alongside elective surgery because there are less efforts/staff members focused on just emergency surgeries.

Basically, the author is stating (I've italicized the assumption s/he is making): "When we paused elective surgery, mortality rates dropped. [The reason for this is because people who would have undergone elective surgery, DIDN'T.] Thus, elective surgery was unnecessarily risky in the past."

^ Some past posters were confused about the "before the 5-week period" part. This is just the author showing the "before" and "after" of a policy (suspending elective surgery) and saying that AFTER a policy was implemented, less people died, which means that BEFORE the policy, people unnecessarily died due to elective surgery. (At least that's what the author believes.)

(A) weakens the author's argument because it is saying that "Actually, there were no excessive risks taken. Elective surgery would have been riskier as time goes by. The time was right for those people to get elective surgery."

[LolaC289]

The previous posts did a good job in explaining why (A) is the best answer here!

But I still think this question is so weird, in particular the way it brought out its conclusion. (A) seems to be dealing with the general matter as to why elective surgery does not incur unnecessary risks, but the conclusion also mentioned a temporal period "before the five-week period".

Thus I thought our task here is to explain the part of statistics as to why after the Elective Surgery was pulled off, the mortality rate has declined by 30%. I understand why (A) attacks the conclusion as a whole, but it doesn't seem to untangle the mysterious decline. And that's why I went with (C), thinking at least it gives account of the 30% decline because it was the unusual high surgical operations that contributed to the high mortality numbers before the 5-week period, instead of Elective Surgeries.

I do think (A) addressed pretty well the increase number of deaths after the 5-week period, because of the accumulated risks of postponing the Elective Surgeries. But the specific timing thing mentioned in the premise really bugged me. Can someone please clarify how you chose to look past that? Or how does the correct answer gives account of that period?