Surgery
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Multicenter Study
Surgical outcome measurement for a global patient population: validation of the Surgical Apgar Score in 8 countries.
Surgical care is a vital component of health care worldwide, yet there is no clinically meaningful measure of operative outcomes that could be applied globally. The Surgical Apgar Score, a simple metric derived from 3 intraoperative parameters, has been shown in U.S. academic medical centers to predict 30-day patient outcomes after operation, but has not been validated more broadly. ⋯ The Surgical Apgar Score is easily calculated, predictive, and moderately discriminative for major complications among adults undergoing inpatient noncardiac operative procedures. Such a score could provide objective indication of relative postoperative risk for inpatients and provide a potential target for quality improvement efforts, particularly in resource-limited settings.