Can surgical outcomes be prevented by postoperative admission to critical care?

Andrew Rhodes,Maurizio Cecconi

doi:10.1186/cc11687

Abstract

Postoperative complications are hugely important for both the patient involved and also the health-care system that they develop within. Potentially disastrous for the patient, they cause prolonged lengths of stay and can be an expensive problem to resolve. Indeed, recent data suggest that these costs may not just be relevant to the short-term hospital stay but may result in signifi cant increased costs for the longer term following repeated hospital admissions and chronic ill health [1-4]. Th e prevention of these complications is thus of the utmost importance for anyone caring for this group of patients. Th is involves developing systems that can avoid the complications occurring in the fi rst place and then to identify and rapidly treat the complications when they arise [5].

Highlights

Postoperative complications are hugely important for both the patient involved and the health-care system that they develop within
It has been estimated that up to 230 million surgical procedures are performed each year in the world [6]
One strategy would be to admit all postoperative patients to an intensive care environment following surgery to enable them to have any of a number of evidence-based interventions in order to improve their outcome [8,13,14]

Summary

Introduction

Postoperative complications are hugely important for both the patient involved and the health-care system that they develop within. For the majority of surgical patients, the risks of complications are low, for a significant number this is not the case [9,10]. Important factors can be grouped into one of a number of main categories: first, those that are present prior to surgery that include the co-morbid status and age of the patient and the type and urgency of the surgery performed and, second, the physiological derangement of the patient at the end of the surgical procedure [10].

Results

Conclusion