Article Text
Abstract
The use of risk stratification tools (RST) aids in clinical triage, decision making and quality assessment in a wide variety of medical fields. Although emergency general surgery (EGS) is characterized by a comorbid, physiologically acute patient population with disparately high rates of perioperative morbidity and mortality, few RST have been explicitly examined in this setting. We examined the available RST with the intent of identifying a tool that comprehensively reflects an EGS patients perioperative risk for death or complication. The ideal tool would combine individualized assessment with relative ease of use. Trauma Scoring Systems, Critical Care Scoring Systems, Surgical Scoring Systems and Track and Trigger Models are reviewed here, with the conclusion that Emergency Surgery Acuity Score and the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Programme Universal Surgical Risk Calculator are the most applicable and appropriate for EGS.
- emergency general surgery
- risk adjustment
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors Study design: JMH, MC. Literature search: JMH, ABC, CVRB, GTT, NTM, MC. Data analysis and interpretation: JMH, ABC, CVRB, GTT, NTM, MC. Writing and critical revisions: JMH, ABC, AJS, CVRB, GTT, NTM, MC.
Funding No funding was received for this work.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.