Shah and Hamilton Critical Care 2013, 17:226

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REVIEW

Clinical review: Can we predict which patients are

at risk of complications following surgery?
Nirav Shah* and Mark Hamilton

Abstract
There are a vast number of operations carried out
every year, with a small proportion of patients being
at highest risk of mortality and morbidity. There has
been considerable work to try and identify these
high-risk patients. In this paper, we look in detail at
the commonly used perioperative risk prediction
models. Finally, we will be looking at the evolution
and evidence for functional assessment and the
National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (in the
USA), both topical and exciting areas of perioperative
prediction.

Introduction
There are an estimated 234 million surgical operations
every year worldwide [1], of which 4.2million operations
are carried out in England [2]. A precise estimation of
perioperative complications and postoperative morbidity
is dicult to gain, but it has been suggested this may
occur in between 3 and 17% of cases [3,4]. This wide
range in reported complications is probably related to
variable reporting, as well as disputed classication of
complications. These complications cover a range of
organ systems, including gastrointestinal, infectious, pulmonary, renal, haematological and cardiovascular [5,6].
These complications can be anaesthetic related (for
example, postoperative nausea and vomiting or hypoxaemia in the recovery room) or surgical (for example,
wound related, ileus or haemorrhage).
Postoperative mortality across all procedures is
approximately 0.5%, although it may exceed 12% in older
patients undergoing emergency surgery in the UK [7]. A
small high-risk group of patients has been shown to be
responsible for approximately 83% of deaths and
signicantly longer hospital stays, despite making up only
*Correspondence: niravken@gmail.com
General Intensive Care Unit, St Georges Hospital, Blackshaw Road, Tooting,
London, SW17 0QT, UK

2010 BioMed Central Ltd

2013 BioMed Central Ltd

12.5% of hospital admissions for surgery [7]. Of note,

almost 90% of the patients in this high-risk group had
emergency surgery, but <15% of them were admitted to
critical care directly from the operating theatre.
Comparatively, cardiac surgery in traditionally high-risk
patients will routinely admit the majority of its patients
to critical care postoperatively. Cardiac surgery has
openly published mortality rates for a number of years.
These rates have demonstrated a steady improvement,
with a typical mortality rate of <2 to 3% [8].
Ideally, we would like to identify the patients who are
most likely to suer postoperative complications or
mortality both to inform the decision to operate, and to
target postoperative care and critical care provision for
these patients. Unfortunately, outcomes for patients
undergoing surgery currently vary widely, and (particularly emergency) surgical care is often disjointed and may
not be appropriately patient centred [9].

Complications
Accurate gures for surgical complication rates are
dicult to obtain because of the lack of consensus
amongst surgeons on what constitutes a postoperative
complication. This diculty is further exacerbated by
disagreement on a structured classication of postoperative complications and morbidity, making it dicult
to compare dierent surgical techniques or predictive
models for surgical complications. In 1992 a model for
classication of surgical complications was proposed by
Clavien and colleagues [10]. Uptake of this model of
classication was slow, due in part to a lack of evidence of
international validation. The model was updated in 2004,
and evaluated in a large cohort of patients by an
international survey. This new model allows grading of
postoperative complications, regardless of the initial
surgery. The dierent categories are broad, permitting
clear placement of complications in the various grades
(Table1).
To accurately record postoperative complications, it is
important to have a validated questionnaire. The Postoperative Morbidity Survey is one such questionnaire
[5,11]. This survey is well-validated and provides objective evidence of postoperative complications, tting the

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Table 1. Classification of surgical complications

Grade

Description

Minor complication that can be easily treated on the ward with simple procedures or medications (for example, intravenous catheter,
nasogastric tube, anti-emetic, simple analgesic)

Postoperative transfusion or treatment with medications other than those simple agents permitted under grade 1

3a

Needing invasive therapy either surgical, endoscopic or radiological without general anaesthesia

3b

Needing invasive therapy either surgical, endoscopic or radiological with general anaesthesia

4a

Single-organ dysfunction requiring high-dependency unit/ICU admission

4b

Multiorgan dysfunction requiring high-dependency unit/ICU admission

Death

Suffix d

Added if the patient is suffering from a complication at discharge

Adapted from [11].

classication described above, and has been validated in

a UK population [6] (Tables2 and 3).

complications. Part of this response would include

appropriate early use of critical care facilities.

Guidelines
There are a number of guidelines available to both aid in
the identication of and guide the care of the high-risk
patient.
In 2010 the Association of Anaesthetists of Great
Britain and Ireland published guidelines on the preoperative assessment of a patient having an anaesthetic [12].
This document encourages a formal preoperative
assessment process, which should start the process of
identifying high-risk patients, as well as preparing the
patient for their anaesthetic. These guidelines incorporate
the guidelines issued by the National Institute for Clinical
Excellence in 2003 on the use of routine preoperative
tests for elective surgery [13].
The American Heart Association published guidelines
on perioperative cardiovascular evaluation and care for
noncardiac surgery in 2007 [14]. These were updated in
2009 to incorporate new evidence relating to perioperative -blockade [15]. Similar guidelines were also
issued by the European Society of Cardiology and
endorsed by the European Society of Anesthesiology in
2009 [16]. One important predictive element suggested
by the guidelines is the use of metabolic equivalents
(METs): 1MET is the oxygen consumption of a 40-yearold, 70 kg man, and is approximately 3.5 ml/minute/kg.
Patients unable to reach 4 METS (equivalent of climbing
a ight of stairs) are suggested to be at increased risk
during surgery [17].
The Royal College of Surgeons of England and the
Department of Health have also set up a Working Group
on the Peri-operative Care of the Higher Risk General
Surgical Patient, which has issued a set of guidelines on
the care of the high-risk surgical patient [9]. In addition
to the detection of complications following surgery, these
guidelines emphasise the importance of a rapid, appropriate response to limit the number and severity of

Risk prediction
Evidently it would be preferable to identify high-risk
patients prior to starting any operations. To make this
identication it is necessary to have an agreed denition
of what constitutes a high-risk patient. The Royal College
of Surgeons of England Working Group has dened a
high-risk patient as one with an estimated mortality 5%,
with consultant presence being encouraged if this value
exceeds 10%. The group go on to suggest that any patients
with estimated mortality >10% should be admitted to
critical care postoperatively.
To accurately estimate probable mortality and morbidity, we should ideally use an approach that combines
the patients physiological characteristics with the
procedure to be carried out to calculate a predictive risk.
The ideal risk prediction score should be simple, easily
reproducible, objective, applicable to all patients and
operations, and both sensitive and specic. Furthermore,
this score should be equally easily applied to both the
emergent and non-emergent patient and setting. Whilst
in the non-emergent setting the anaesthetist has access to
all of the patients investigations and to more elaborate
physiological investigations, the emergent scenario
requires decisions based on the acute physiological
condition and quick investigations. The two scenarios
can therefore be very dierent, and it may not be possible
to use one risk score for both emergent and nonemergent operations.
There are various risk scoring systems that have been
described in the literature. These systems can be classied as those estimating population risk or individual risk
[18,19]. Scores predicting individual risk can be general,
organ specic, or procedure specic. It is important not
to use population-based scoring systems in isolation to
make individual decisions because they cannot always be
extrapolated to specic patients.

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Table 2. Clinical examples of postoperative complications

Grade

Organ system

Example

Cardiac

Arrhythmia cardioconverting with electrolytes

Respiratory

Fluid overload requiring diuretics

Neurological

Mild delirium, self-limiting

3a

Gastrointestinal

Drug-related diarrhoea

Renal

Mild acute renal failure (not requiring treatment)

Cardiac

Atrial fibrillation requiring -blockade/digoxin

Respiratory

Pneumonia needing antibiotics and/or oxygen

Neurological

Transient ischaemic attack

Gastrointestinal

Ileus needing nasogastric/further treatment

Renal

Urinary tract infection needing antibiotics

Cardiac

Bradyarrhythmia needing pacing wire

Respiratory

Effusion needing chest drain

Neurological

Extra/subdural haematoma needing evacuation

Gastrointestinal

Pseudo-obstruction needing flatus tube

Renal
3b

4a

Cardiac

Tachyarrhythmia needing direct current cardioversion

Respiratory

Bronchopleural fistula post thoracic surgery

Neurological

Extra/subdural haematoma needing evacuation

Gastrointestinal

Anastomic leakage needing surgery

Renal

Stenosis of ureters after transplantation

Cardiac

Heart failure requiring ionotropes

Respiratory

Pneumonia needing intubation

Neurological

Cerebrovascular accident/haemorrhage

Gastrointestinal

Pancreatitis

Renal

Acute renal failure

4b

Any combination of the above

Adapted from [11].

An example of a general score that is based on estimating population risk is the American Society of
Anesthetists (ASA) classication [20]. The ASA classication was not originally composed as a risk prediction
score, although it is often used as such. The dierent ASA
classes have been shown to be good predictors of
mortality [21], while the rate of postoperative morbidity
has also been noted to vary with class [22]. The ASA
system has the advantage of being a simple, easily applied
score, which is widely known. However, the ASA classication is subjective and does not provide individual or
procedure specic information. The system has also been
shown to have poor sensitivity and specicity for
individual patient morbidity and mortality [23].
The Charlson Comorbidity Index is a generic score
based on weighting various preoperative diseases and
predicting long-term survival [24]. This score is relatively
simple to use, but also does not take into account the
surgical operation, and relies on a subjective assessment

of the patient, which may lead to errors. As such, it tends

to be used as a research tool rather than in daily clinical
practice [25].
In 1999 Lee and colleagues published a Revised Cardiac
Risk Index [26]. This index is a scoring system used solely
to predict the risk of major cardiac events after noncardiac surgery. Whilst the Revised Cardiac Risk Index is
a simple, well-validated system that also considers the
scale of surgery undertaken, it can only be used to predict
single-organ risk.
The Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation
(APACHE) score was rst introduced in 1981 [27] before
the updated APACHE II score was published in 1985
[28]. The APACHE II system assigns a score based on 12
physiological variables, with further points for age and
chronic health, but it does not consider the type of
surgery undertaken as the score was originally designed
for use in critical care. This score therefore provides an
individualised risk of mortality and morbidity, but does

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Table 3. The Postoperative Morbidity Survey

Morbidity type

Criterion

Source of data

Respiratory

Postoperative need for oxygen or respiratory support

Patient observation, drug chart

Microbiology

Antibiotics or pyrexia >38C in previous 24 hours

Observation chart, drug chart

Renal

Oliguria, raised serum creatinine, new urinary catheter

Fluid balance chart, biochemistry result, patient observation

Gastrointestinal

Failure of enteral feeding

Patient questioning, fluid balance chart, drug chart

Cardiovascular

Diagnostic tests or treatment within last 24 hours for any of:

new myocardial infarct or ischaemia, hypotension, arrhythmias,
cardiogenic pulmonary oedema, thrombotic event

Drug chart, note review

Neurological

Cerebrovascular accident/transient ischaemic attack, confusion,

delirium, coma

Note review, patient questioning

Haematological

Use within last 24 hours of: packed red cells, platelets, fresh-frozen
plasma, cryoprecipitate

Drug chart, fluid balance chart

Surgical wound

Wound dehiscence/infection needing exploration or drainage of pus

Note review, pathology result

Pain

New pain requiring parenteral opioids or regional analgesia/anaesthesia

Drug chart, patient questioning

Adapted from [6].

not dierentiate between dierent procedures. Despite

this lack of dierentiation, APACHE has been shown to
give a better prediction of outcome than the ASA system
[29], and has been shown to predict dierent levels of
surgical complications (minor, major and death).
APACHE III and APACHE IV have subsequently been
released, but have not been validated to the same extent
as APACHE II for preoperative risk prediction. In
addition, these scores are considerably more complex,
requiring 17 physiological variables to be measured over
the rst 24 hours of critical care stay. This requirement
for the variables to be recorded over the rst 24hours of
critical care stay is present in all variations of the
APACHE score, and is a major impediment to the regular
use of this score preoperatively in emergency or urgent
surgery.
A derivation of the APACHE system that is useful for
comparing patients with dierent diseases is the
Simplied Acute Physiology Score II [30]. This score also
requires the collection of 17 variables over the rst
24 hours of critical care stay, resulting in a predicted
mortality score. The Simplied Acute Physiology Score II
is not designed for use in perioperative prediction,
although it can be used in this eld.
The Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the
Enumeration of Mortality and Morbidity (POSSUM)
score was designed for use in preoperative risk prediction, allowing for both individual physiological risk
and the type of surgery performed [31]. This scoring
system examines 12 physiological and six operative variables, which are then entered into two mathematical
equations to predict mortality and morbidity. Unfortunately, there was a tendency to overpredict mortality in
low-risk patients as a result of using logistic regression to
predict risk (the lowest possible mortality risk is 1.08%).
In 1998 Portsmouth-POSSUM was published in an

attempt to reduce this overprediction [32]. Whilst

improving the mortality scoring, Portsmouth-POSSUM
did not update the equation for morbidity scoring.
Another variation of POSSUM is colorectal-POSSUM,
designed in 2004 for use in colorectal surgery [33].
Despite some evidence that POSSUM may overestimate
or underestimate risk in specic populations, POSSUM
and its various surgery-specic iterations remain the
most validated and used scoring system for predicting
individual patient risk (Table4).
These scores are often used to calculate the mortality
and morbidity risk prior to surgery. However, it is
important to keep in mind the fact that high-risk surgery
may still be of benet in certain patients. It is also
important not to base postoperative critical care admissions purely on the scoring systems above. To this end,
strict admission and discharge criteria from and to a
critical care unit remain dicult to objectivise. Occasionally we will see patients who do not have a high score on
the above systems, but clinically are frail, have multiple
minor co-morbidities, or have fewer more signicant comorbidities. Treating these cases as high-risk patients
with postoperative critical care is important despite the
low score. Ultimately, the various risk stratication scores
can only be accurate for a proportion of patients, and
there will always be patients in whom they are not
accurate. These patients are those who can only be
selected out through clinical acumen, or by paying
attention to the much-talked-about gut feeling.
Important to remember is that some scores are
designed to be calculated preoperatively (POSSUM),
while others are designed for postoperative use (APACHE).
While the scores can be adapted and used at any stage in
the patients care, they may not be as accurate.
An area of anaesthetic preoperative assessment that is
receiving a high level of interest currently is functional

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Table 4. Comparison of risk prediction scoring systems

Risk prediction system

Description

Advantages

Disadvantages

American Society of Anesthetists

Numerical scale (1 to 5) based on

severity of co-morbidities

Simple, easily applied, well known

Subjective, not individual or procedure

specific, poor sensitivity and specificity

Charlson Comorbidity Score

Additive score based on weighting

of preoperative diseases

Simple, better predictor than

American Society of Anesthetists,
good at estimating population risk

Subjective, does not look at procedure,

mainly used as a research tool

Revised Cardiac Risk Index

Scoring system based on presence

of one of six major co-morbidities
and the severity of operation

Simple, well validated and good for

predicting cardiac risk

Single-organ risk, broad categories,

assessment of severity of operation is
subjective

Acute Physiology and Chronic

Health Evaluation

12 to 17 variables, measured over

24 hours

Individualised predictor of risk of

mortality and morbidity, better
predictor of outcome than American
Society of Anesthetists, well known

Multiple variables over 24 hours of critical

care, can be difficult to score before
emergent surgery, not designed for use
perioperatively

Simplified Acute Physiology

Score

17 variables measured over 24 hours

Well validated for predictive

mortality

Multiple variables over 24 hours of critical

care, can be difficult to score before
emergent surgery, not designed for use
perioperatively

Physiological and Operative

Severity Score for the
Enumeration of Mortality and
Morbidity

Scoring of 12 physiological and six

operative variables, which are then
entered into two mathematical
equations to predict mortality and
morbidity

Best validated and known/used

scores for perioperative prediction
various surgery-specific variations for
specific areas

May overestimate or underestimate

mortality and morbidity in specific
populations due to use of logarithmic
regression

assessment. Traditionally, functional assessment has

always been a part of preoperative assessment prior to
the removal of organs (pulmonary testing before pneumonectomy or dimercaptosuccinic acid scan before
nephrectomy). In addition, functional testing is often
used to quantify the level of disease in a patient with
known disease (stress echocardiography or pulmonary
function testing).
Cardiopulmonary exercise testing is an integrated test
that looks at both cardiac and pulmonary function. This
testing involves incremental physical exercise, up to the
patients maximal level (at which they are unable to do
more, or become symptomatic). Whilst doing this exercise, the ventilatory eort, inspiratory and expiratory
gasses, blood pressure and electrocardiogram are recorded. These are used to calculate two values the bodys
maximal oxygen uptake and the point at which anaerobic
metabolism exceeds aerobic metabolism (anaerobic
threshold). These gures are used to demonstrate the
ability of the cardiopulmonary system to oxygenate the
body. Measurement of the maximal oxygen uptake, and
hence the patients true MET status, by cardiopulmonary
exercise testing has demonstrated that the traditional
estimation of MET is often inaccurate. This inaccuracy
has led to increased identication of patients that have
increased risk without being symptomatic or having
identiable factors in their medical and anaesthetic
history. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing has long been
shown to have good predictive value for postoperative
complications in pulmonary resection surgery [34,35].

There is now increasing evidence for the benet of using

cardiopulmonary exercise testing in general surgery as a
predictive test for postoperative morbidity and mortality
[36-40]. However, there are still doubts about the
evidence base in certain surgical specialties and hence
the global suitability of cardiopulmonary exercise testing
at present [41].
In 1991, in the USA, the National Veterans Aairs
Surgical Risk Study prospectively collected data on major
operations at 44 Veterans Aairs hospitals [42]. Based on
these data, the study developed risk-adjusted models for
30-day morbidity and mortality for a number of surgical
subspecialties [43,44]. Following on from this study, the
Veterans Aairs National Surgical Quality Improvement
Program (NSQIP) was set up in 1994 at all of the Veterans
Aairs hospitals, leading to a 45% reduction in morbidity
and a 27% decrease in mortality (and hence large cost
savings) [45]. The NSQIP was subsequently expanded to
include a number of university teaching hospitals in the
Patient Safety in Surgery study funded by the American
College of Surgeons (ACS) from 2001 to 2004. The
Patient Safety in Surgery study demonstrated a signicantly lower 30-day unadjusted mortality for men in the
study hospital [46,47].
As a result, in 2004 the ACS-NSQIP was started. By
2008, 198 hospitals were receiving ACS-NSQIP feedback
on their outcomes [48]. Using the hospitals with lower
morbidity or mortality as benchmarks to identify the
adjustable factors in poor outcomes in individual hospitals, these factors can be changed to improve outcomes

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[49,50]. One example of this relates to colectomies

performed in ACS-NSQIP enrolled hospitals. These
operations have been shown to increasingly be performed
laparoscopically in these hospitals, with signicant
reductions in most major complications (including
surgical-site infections, pneumonia and sepsis) [51]. One
should remember despite the potential benets of the
ACS-NSQIP programme that there are limits to its
usefulness. The input of data is labour intensive, and the
results are only as good as the data input. Furthermore,
the results are based on interpretation of data in specic
categories, thus missing complications that do not fall
into these specic areas [52-54]. This ACS-NSQIP
programme is also building up a large database of
information that should hopefully produce more eective
risk stratication scores in the future.
One area of healthcare policy that is very topical is the
improved outcomes provided by carrying out certain
operations in fewer high-volume surgical centres [55,56].
Low-risk patients, however, have been shown to have
comparable outcomes in both low-volume and highvolume centres [57]. The moderate-risk to high-risk
patients do still have better outcomes in the larger
regional centres. Hence, it is important to risk stratify a
patient before selecting a hospital for an elective
operation (the local smaller hospital may still be an
appropriate place to undergo surgery).

Conclusion
Currently, preoperative risk stratication is often not part
of the standard preoperative assessment (with the exception of the ASA classication). There are a number of
reasons for this omission. The currently available scores
are often complicated, needing multiple tests or time to
complete. Facilities and sta time/training may not be
available for functional testing. Traditionally, junior
doctors, in addition to their other clinical duties, carried
out preoperative assessment they may not have been
aware of the guidelines and risk stratication scores for
use in surgery. Additionally, mortality and morbidity
tables for individual hospitals and surgeons/surgeries are
not routinely published for noncardiac surgery. As a
result, this is often not a priority for hospital managers or
clinicians who may or may not know accurate outcome
statistics for their patients. However, the current nancial
restraints on the National Health Service are likely to
lead to renewed eorts to reduce the length of stay in
hospital by reducing postoperative morbidity. The
governments stated aim to increase competition (and in
so doing improve results) is likely to lead to increased
interest in also reducing mortality. In the absence of a
British version of NSQIP, there is likely to be increased
focus on preoperative risk stratication scoring. As well
as potentially reducing costs and improving performance,

Page 6 of 8

preoperative scoring has the potential to ensure better

informed consent and patient/procedural selection, as
well as appropriate targeting of postoperative critical care
services.
Unfortunately, all of the currently used risk scoring
systems have limitations. These limitations include interobserver variability for the ASA classication, the
complicated nature and need for 24 hours of observations
with APACHE, and the overestimation of mortality in
lower risk groups with POSSUM. The single-organ scores
are often useful in predicting organ dysfunction, but only
provide a limited picture. The present limitations do not
preclude the use of the tests, but ensure that it is
important to select the test based on the patient
population and the surgery being performed. Currently
assigning patients to bands of risk (that is, high, medium
or low) may be the best we can achieve, but it is still not a
routine calculation.
An area of great interest in preoperative assessment for
elective surgery is functional testing. This area presently
generates a lot of debate, with strong views on both sides.
There is good evidence for the use of functional testing in
specic surgical specialties. However, the situation does
remain unclear in other forms of surgery. In addition,
functional testing is time consuming, and requires
investment and training to get started. This investment is
clearly dicult at present with budgets being reduced
across the board. To become established, further evidence is needed to demonstrate its relevance across all
surgical specialties. This is an area that is still in its
infancy, but as further research is carried out will
probably become more established and see wider use.
The potential to provide individualised risk prediction
based on an individuals physiological response to stress
is an exciting area, with the possibility of high predictive
value and better use of critical resources to improve
patient care.
This is part of a series on Perioperative monitoring, edited by
DrAndrew Rhodes

Abbreviations
ACS, American College of Surgeons; APACHE, Acute Physiology and Chronic
Health Evaluation; ASA, American Society of Anesthetists; MET, metabolic
equivalent; NSQIP, National Surgical Quality Improvement Program; POSSUM,
Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the Enumeration of Mortality
and Morbidity.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Published: 7 May 2013
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doi:10.1186/cc11904
Cite this article as: Shah N, Hamilton M: Clinical Review: Can we predict
which patients are at risk of complications following surgery? Critical Care
2013, 17:226.