What outcomes do patients consider most valuable after colon and rectal surgery?
After colorectal surgery, patients prioritize cancer-free survival and avoidance of stomas or complications over traditional surgical metrics like length of stay or incision appearance.
Overall, patients reported high satisfaction with their care. Most important priorities included being free of cancer, stoma, and surgical complications. In contrast, outcomes traditionally important to surgeons such as laparoscopy, incision appearance, and length of stay were deemed less important. This research helps elucidate the outcomes patients truly consider valuable, and surgeons should focus on these outcomes when making surgical decisions. See Video Abstract at http://links.lww.com/DCR/A596. See Visual Abstract at https://tinyurl.com/yb25xl66.
Wrenn et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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