AT THE ASA ANNUAL MEETING
PHILADELPHIA (FRONTLINE MEDICAL NEWS) – Overlapping and concurrent surgical procedures operations are not uncommon, but data on their safety and quality are scarce.
An analysis of the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) data suggests that concurrent operations do not pose any greater risk to patients than do nonconcurrent operations.
“We found that concurrent operations were more often elective inpatient operations at large academic hospitals,” Jason Liu, MD, a clinical scholar-in-residence with the American College of Surgeons, Chicago, said at the annual meeting of the American Surgical Association.
The ACS Statement of Principles defines concurrent operations as those in which the critical components of operations overlap in time, whereas overlapping operations are those in which the critical components do not overlap. However, it is the attending surgeon’s judgment that currently determines which components are critical. This study specifically defined concurrent operations as those that overlapped by at least 60 minutes or in their entirety.
The study evaluated 12,010 concurrent and 521,656 nonconcurrent operations in the ASC NSQIP registry between 2014 and 2015, and propensity-score matched 11,044 operations of each type to evaluate safety. “We then analyzed the three primary outcomes – death or serious morbidity, unplanned reoperation, and unplanned readmission,” Dr. Liu said. “After propensity matching and risk adjustment, we detected no association of concurrent operations with these adverse outcomes.”
Death or serious morbidity had an odds ratio of 1.08, while the odds ratio for reoperation and readmission were 1.16 and 1.14, respectively.
Of the five surgery subspecialty groups presented, ear, nose and throat surgeons performed the highest proportion of concurrent operations, comprising 11.2% of all operations within the subspecialty, followed by neurosurgeons (8.4%) and urological surgeons (5.2%). General surgeons performed more total concurrent cases than did any of the other surgical subspecialties, but these comprised only 1.5% of all general surgery cases.
Among the individual operations presented, the highest percentage of concurrent cases was for spinal operations, comprising 7.1% of all spinal surgeries, followed by total knee and hip replacements, at 2.1% each. Among general surgery procedures, concurrent operations comprised 1.9% of colon surgeries, 1.5% of ventral hernia repairs, and 0.9% of cholecystectomies.
“We found that patients who had concurrent operations tended to have fewer comorbidities,” Dr. Liu said.
Despite the findings suggesting concurrent operations are safe, Dr. Liu added that “failure to detect an effect does not prove its absence. Additional studies and continued vigilance are certainly needed moving forward.”
In her discussion, Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, pointed out that the American College of Surgeons has not revised its statement that considers concurrent surgery “not appropriate,” and that the study itself “reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of ‘big data.’ ” While ACS NSQIP provides a large number of patients, the study authors were still constrained in using time as a proxy for concurrence, she said. “Also, as noted, this analysis reports only a sample of operations rather than all the procedures performed, and the authors were constrained to using simulated statistical methods to avoid misclassification of cases,” Dr. Rusch said.
The death or serious morbidity composite measure the study used may not identify procedure-specific or specialty-specific adverse events that could reflect differences in outcomes between concurrent and nonconcurrent operations, she said. “Nonetheless, this study represents an important step toward bringing science to an extremely important and rightfully contentious aspect of surgical practice,” Dr. Rusch said.
Senior coauthor David Hoyt, MD, FACS, of the ACS, acknowledged the many study limitations Dr. Rusch pointed out. “What this analysis shows is that probably there’s not a huge problem with morbidity and mortality,” Dr. Hoyt said. “It doesn’t really say that we should pursue this without some care of how we do this.”
A key element in planning concurrent surgery is disclosing that to the patient. “Much of what came out of the discussion that led to this was because patients felt that they were not informed,” Dr. Hoyt said. “It really has to do with an ethical issue of patient autonomy.”
Dr. Liu, Dr. Hoyt, and Dr. Rusch had no financial relationships to disclose.
The complete manuscript of this study and its presentation at the American Surgical Association’s 137th Annual Meeting, April 2017, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is anticipated to be published in the Annals of Surgery pending editorial review.
