Postoperative complications and disposition for vascular surgery

Among all surgical specialties, vascular surgery has the greatest proportion of patients with unplanned admissions to the intensive care unit postoperatively. Therefore, current clinical pathways for the postoperative management of vascular surgery patients may need to be revised. We aimed to compare the prevalence of postoperative deterioration in the high and standard risk cohorts of patients through several markers: medical emergency team activations and unplanned intensive care unit admissions. This was a single-centre, retrospective cohort study of all vascular surgical patients, emergency and elective, between 1 January and 31 December 2020 at Fiona Stanley Hospital, a tertiary hospital located in Perth, Western Australia. Patients ( n = 680) were risk stratified using the surgical outcome risk tool into standard-risk (30-day mortality risk <5%; n = 475, 69.9%) and high-risk (30-day mortality risk ≥5%; n = 205, 30.1%). There were 43 unplanned intensive care unit admissions (6.3%) in total. Furthermore, surgical outcome risk tool 5% or greater risk patients were approximately eight times more likely to experience an unplanned intensive care unit admission compared with their surgical outcome risk tool less than 5% risk counterparts (relative risk 7.65, 95% confidence interval 3.84–15.21). There were 87 medical emergency team calls (12.8%) in total. In addition, surgical outcome risk tool 5% or greater risk patients were approximately five times more likely to experience a medical emergency team activation than their surgical outcome risk tool less than 5% risk counterparts (relative risk 5.15, 95% confidence interval 3.37–7.86). Our findings highlight the need for a revision of the inpatient journey for surgical outcome risk tool 5% or greater risk vascular patients, given their increased rates of unfavourable postoperative outcomes such as unplanned intensive care unit admission and medical emergency team activation. Ideally this can be addressed through appropriate postoperative triage, thus allowing this vulnerable population group early access to higher acuity care.