Surg J R Coll Surg E
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Surg J R Coll Surg E · Jun 2014
Surgical mortality - an analysis of all deaths within a general surgical department.
Post-operative mortality is one of the most universal and important outcomes that can be measured in surgical practice and is increasingly used to measure quality of care. The aim of this study was to evaluate overall mortality within a surgical department and to analyse factors associated with operative and non-operative death. ⋯ Post-operative deaths comprise a small proportion of overall deaths within a surgical service. Mortality figures alone are not an accurate representation of surgical performance but in the absence of other easily available quality outcome measures they can be used as a surrogate marker when all confounding factors are accounted for.