• Yoshihiro Mise, Jean-Nicolas Vauthey, Giuseppe Zimmitti, Nathan H Parker, Claudius Conrad, Thomas A Aloia, Jeffrey E Lee, Jason B Fleming, and Matthew Harold G Katz.
• Department of Surgical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.
• Ann. Surg. 2015 Dec 1;262(6):1071-8.

ObjectiveTo investigate the legitimacy of 90-day mortality as a measure of hepatopancreatobiliary quality.BackgroundThe 90-day mortality rate has been increasingly but not universally reported after hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. The legitimacy of this definition as a measure of surgical quality has not been evaluated.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed the causes of all deaths that occurred within 365 postoperative days in patients undergoing hepatectomy (n = 2811) and/or pancreatectomy (n = 1092) from January 1997 to December 2012. The rates of surgery-related, disease-related, and overall mortality within 30 days, within 30 days or during the index hospitalization, within 90 days, and within 180 days after surgery were calculated.ResultsSeventy-nine (3%) surgery-related deaths and 92 (3%) disease-related deaths occurred within 365 days after hepatectomy. Twenty (2%) surgery-related deaths and 112 (10%) disease-related deaths occurred within 365 days after pancreatectomy. The overall mortality rates at 99 and 118 days optimally reflected surgery-related mortality after hepatobiliary and pancreatic operations, respectively. The 90-day overall mortality rate was a less sensitive but equivalently specific measure of surgery-related death.Conclusions And RelevanceThe 99- and 118-day definitions of postoperative mortality optimally reflected surgery-related mortality after hepatobiliary and pancreatic operations, respectively. However, among commonly reported metrics, the 90-day overall mortality rate represents a legitimate measure of surgical quality.

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