A study published in Spine examines the risk modeling for predicting spine surgery complications.
The researchers examined data from the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project database and included information from 22,430 spine cases. The researchers found:
1. The overall complication rate was 9.9 percent, with the most common complications being:
• Postoperative bleeding requiring transfusion: 4.1 percent
• Non-wound infections: 3.1 percent
• Wound-related infections: 2.2 percent
2. There were 20 factors associated with complications, according to a multivariate regression analysis. The risk model was scored as follows:
• One point assessed for each risk factor
• The cohort scores were from zero to 13
• The average score was four
3. Around 3 percent of the patient with a zero to four score reported complications; 18.5 percent of the patients with five to 13 scores reported complications.
4. The risk model predicted complication rates of 1.2 percent for patients with a score of zero and 63.3 percent for patients with a 12 score. Patients with a 13 score all reported complications.
5. The risk score correlated with the total length of stay, mortality and work relative value unit for the cases strongly.