Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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Accurate differentiation of pancreatic cystic lesions is important for pancreatic cancer early detection and prevention as well as avoidance of unnecessary surgical intervention. Serous cystic neoplasms (SCN) have no malignant potential, but may mimic premalignant mucinous cystic lesions: mucinous cystic neoplasm (MCN) and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN). We recently identified vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A as a novel pancreatic fluid biomarker for SCN. We hypothesize that combining cyst fluid carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) with VEGF-A will improve the diagnostic accuracy of VEGF-A. ⋯ Although VEGF-A alone is a highly accurate test for SCN, the combination of VEGF-A with CEA approaches the gold-standard of pathologic diagnosis, thus importantly avoiding false positives. Patients with a positive test indicating benign SCN can be spared a high risk surgical pancreatic resection.
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Recent improvements to morbidity and mortality (M&M) conference have focused on the case review system. However, case selection occurs by physician reporting, which is limited by selection bias. We compared the effectiveness of our M&M conference with the NSQIP-Pediatric (NSQIP-P) system for identifying adverse events. ⋯ The NSQIP-P identified more complications than M&M. The M&M conference improvements increased reported cases, but they still remained lower than NSQIP-P. However, M&M conference identified events resulting in systems changes that would not have been identified by NSQIP-P. Although NSQIP-P captures occurrences to compare large patient cohorts, M&M analyzes singular failures and initiates direct interventions. Integration of these systems can optimize their usefulness in quality improvement.
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The American College of Surgeons NSQIP offers a Surgical Risk Calculator (SRC) that provides detailed, patient-level, risk assessments for many adverse outcomes to surgeons, patients, and the general public. The SRC calculator was designed to help guide discussion and decisions by providing generally applicable (not hospital-specific) information about surgical risk using easily understood and broadly available preoperative variables. Although large, internal evaluations have shown that the SRC has good accuracy (model discrimination and calibration), external validations have been inconsistent and tend to favor a conclusion of inadequate performance. ⋯ The SRC predictive failures, reported by studies with the described design limitations, should not be misunderstood as disqualifying the SRC as an accurate and appropriate tool for its intended purpose of providing a general purpose risk calculator, applicable across many surgical domains, using easily understood and generally available predictive information.
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Laparoscopic distal pancreatectomy (LDP) is becoming the standard treatment for left-sided pancreatic disease. Learning curve identification is essential to ensure a safe and steady expansion. However, large (n > 30) single-surgeon learning curve series are lacking. ⋯ Operative outcomes of LDP remained stable with increasing surgical complexity over time. Postoperative outcomes, such as complications and length of hospital stay, improved after the first 30 cases. When describing learning curves, short- and long-term outcomes should be considered.