Key result
Quantifying surgical risk guides safe treatment decisions and sets realistic patient expectations.
Why the study?
Surgical decision-making has become complex with increased expectations, requiring quantification of patient risk to guide treatment choices and set realistic expectations.
Quantifying surgical risk is essential for safe treatment selection and informed patient decision-making.
Distinguishing treatment goals from realistic patient expectations aids surgical decisions; Level 5 evidence leaves open standardized implementation tools.
Surgical decision-making has evolved over time, and what was once an intuitive matter for surgeons has now become a multi-faceted decision with increased expectations from medical staff and patients, making the decision-making process itself often as challenging as the technical procedure.When planning the most appropriate treatment for a patient, it is important to distinguish what we aim to achieve with regards to treating the pathology from what can be realistically expected from the patient physiologically.In other words, has the patient the potential to withstand the insult of the treatment itself and what are the risks involved?By quantifying this risk and making it a key part of surgical decision-making, we can arrive at the safest modality of treatment for an individual patient.This allows realistic expectations for the patient, helping them to make an informed decision.This article aims to highlight some of the important aspects of surgical risk and the impact they have on patients.
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Chand et al. (2007) conducted a review in Surgical risk. Surgical risk assessment was evaluated. Quantifying surgical risk is a key part of surgical decision-making that helps arrive at the safest treatment modality and allows realistic expectations for patients.
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