A prospective study evaluating perioperative quality metrics of cancer surgery: Experience from a tertiary care cancer centre in India

Abstract

Background Well‐defined quality metrics were studied at this high‐volume tertiary care academic oncology centre to evaluate surgical quality and outcomes. Methods A prospective cohort of 691 patients undergoing major surgeries for all cancers was observed between 1 September 2018 and 30 August 2019 and predefined quality indicators in three categories: namely, optimal hospital resource utilisation, quality of surgery and perioperative outcomes were recorded during their admission period. Surgical procedures were divided into group I versus group II involving simple/moderate complexity versus high complexity procedures for analysis done using appropriate tests in STATA v14.0. Findings There were 373 versus 318 patients in group I versus group II with a mean of 48 years of age and 459 (66.43%) being females. Mean BMI was 24.58 kg/m2, haemoglobin 12.12 g/dL and mean serum albumin of 4.25 g (SD ± 0.6). A total of 667(96.53%) patients had an Eastern Co‐Operative Oncology Group performance score of 1 with 271 (39.22%) having comorbidities and 195 (28.22%) having tobacco/alcohol addictions. A total of 393 (56.87%) patients underwent prehabilitation. 83% of patients belonged to lower‐middle socioeconomic status and 32% of patients had some prior surgical intervention. Neoadjuvant therapy was administered in 44.5% versus 37.42%, mean preoperative hospital stay was 3.65 versus 6.16 days whereas postoperative was 2.6 versus 6.09 days with total stay being 6.27 versus 12.21 days, mean surgical duration was 132 versus 268 min with mean blood loss of 100 versus 245 mL (group I vs. group II, respectively). Intraoperative events, namely, unexpected bleeding and hypotension occurred in 144 (20.84%) patients while packed red blood cells and/or fresh frozen plasma transfusion was required in 56 (8.1%) patients. 40% of patients needed intensive care unit care postoperatively with 45 (6.51%) patients having some event (hypotension, sepsis, acute kidney injury, etc.). A total of 29 (<4%) patients had ≥grade 3 surgical complications while ≥grade 2 medical complications occurred in 6.43% versus 12.58% of patients (group I vs. group II). A total of 90 (13.02%) patients were readmitted, 15 (2.17%) re‐explored and 5 (0.72%) patients died. Conclusion Optimal surgical outcomes in this study compared to international standards underpin the need for well‐defined multidisciplinary perioperative pathways to be followed for each organ system and this framework can be adopted by other cancer centres in LMIC to achieve good surgical outcomes.