Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · May 2020
Multidisciplinary survey of current and future use of emergency laparotomy risk assessment scores in New Zealand.
Risk prediction is an important part of the management of emergency laparotomy (EL) patients. This study aims to investigate the current use of and future directions for EL risk prediction scores. New Zealand members of the Royal Australasian College of Surgery (RACS), Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and College of Intensive Care Medicine (CICM) were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. ⋯ The most important outcomes that the respondents would like to predict were quality of life and 30-day mortality rather than long-term impact from EL. These findings suggest that developing a new score may be required to improve utilisation and help in decision-making. This may require tailoring risk scores specifically for EL, and designing them to predict what is preferred by the clinicians making the decisions.