Highlights the need for improved perioperative care systems and routine outcome audits to reduce mortality in high-risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery.
Non-cardiac surgery has a low overall mortality but is associated with a large number of deaths because so many procedures are performed.Most deaths occur in a group of patients who are at high risk because of advanced age, comorbid disease, or major surgery (hospital mortality rate 12%).More effective systems can improve quality of perioperative care and may improve survival while reducing healthcare costs.Further research is needed to identify the most effective approaches to perioperative medicine for high risk patients.Routine audit of outcomes after all non-cardiac surgery is urgently needed.
Pearse et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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