27 Mar A checklist of surgical safety reduces the number of deaths and complications associated with surgery

⇒ The INCLIVA Anesthesia Research Group participates in an international study on the use of checklists for surgical safety and quality in the intervention of the patient.

⇒ The results of the multicentre trial have been published in the scientific journal British Journal of Anesthesia (BJA).

This is a multicentre observational study comparing the complications of patients after surgery, taking into account the previous use of a checklist of parameters related to surgical safety. The surgical safety checklist, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), is the most widely used, includes 19 items collected in three moments: the first, before the induction of anesthesia, the second, before the surgical incision, and a third, before the patient leaves the operating room. The main finding of this research has been that patients exposed to a safety checklist had a lower incidence of postoperative complications and mortality compared to patients who were not exposed to a checklist. These results may reflect a higher quality of care in hospitals where the checklist is in regular use, according to the study. «Although the data included in the meta-analyzes are mainly observational, this study adds to the general understanding of what is known as surgical» CheckList «, showing that the use of a checklist favors the safety and quality of the patient, and is widely used. internationally» says Dr. Marina Soro, coordinator of the study at the University Clinical Hospital of Valencia, Spain. In the study, 497 hospitals from 27 countries collaborated, including a total of 44,814 participants for the analysis. The inclusion criteria were all patients of legal age undergoing scheduled surgery, that the patient had to stay in the hospital for at least one night. All participants were informed and gave their consent to be part of the study. Each collaborating center selected a single week of data collection, between April and August 2014. During this period, patient data was collected until discharge from hospital, using a standard registration format. The data included reference demographic information such as age, sex, smoking, associated diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, respiratory diseases, etc. In addition, the type of surgical intervention, the care after the surgery and the postoperative clinical results.

On Patient Safety in Surgical Interventions

Each year more than 310 million surgical procedures are performed worldwide, and there are recent data suggesting that approximately 75 million patients will experience a postoperative complication. Perioperative adverse events represent one in six incidents of patient safety, and it is estimated that up to half of the complications are potentially avoidable. The checklists are a simple and reproducible way to standardize selected aspects of patient care, as reflected in the study. In 2008, WHO provided a checklist of various items related to surgical safety (name checking, pulse oximeter placement, etc.) as a recommended guide for safer surgical practices, which has been adopted in more than 4,000 hospitals around the world, and now it is considered a promising marker of the quality of patient care.

Access to the article:

 The surgical safety checklist and patient outcomes after surgery: a prospective observational cohort study, systematic review and meta-analysis. Abbott TEF, Ahmad T, Phull MK, Fowler AJ, Hewson R, Biccard BM, Chew MS, Gillies M, Pearse RM; International Surgical Outcomes Study (ISOS) group. Br J Anaesth. 2018 Jan;120(1):146-155. doi: 10.1016/j.bja.2017.08.002  

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