Peri‐operative cardiac arrest in the older frail patient as reported to the 7th National Audit Project of the Royal College of Anaesthetists

Abstract

SummaryFrailty increases peri‐operative risk, but details of its burden, clinical features and the risk of, and outcomes following, peri‐operative cardiac arrest are lacking. As a preplanned analysis of the 7th National Audit Project of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, we described the characteristics of older patients living with frailty undergoing anaesthesia and surgery, and those reported to the peri‐operative cardiac arrest case registry. In the activity survey, 1676 (26%) of 6466 patients aged > 65 y were reported as frail (Clinical Frailty Scale score ≥ 5). Increasing age and frailty were both associated with increasing comorbidities and the proportion of surgery undertaken as an emergency. Except in patients who were terminally ill (Clinical Frailty Scale score 9), increasing frailty was associated with an increased proportion of complex or major surgery. The rate of use of invasive arterial blood pressure monitoring was associated with frailty only until Clinical Frailty Scale score 5, and then plateaued or fell. Of 881 cardiac arrests reported to the 7th National Audit Project, 156 (18%) were in patients aged > 65 y and living with frailty, with an estimated incidence of 1 in 1204 (95%CI 1 in 1027–1412) and a mortality rate of 1 in 2020 (95%CI 1 in 1642–2488), approximately 2.6‐fold higher than in adults who were not frail. Hip fracture, emergency laparotomy, emergency vascular surgery and urological surgery were the most common surgical procedures in older patients living with frailty who had a cardiac arrest. We report a high burden of frailty within the surgical population, requiring complex, urgent surgery, and the extent of poorer outcomes of peri‐operative cardiac arrest compared with patients of the same age not living with frailty.