• Annals of surgery · May 2017

    Postacute Care and Recovery After Cancer Surgery: Still a Long Way to Go.

    • Courtney J Balentine, Peter A Richardson, Meredith C Mason, Aanand D Naik, David H Berger, and Daniel A Anaya.
    • *Department of Surgery, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI†Houston Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety, Houston, TX‡Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX§Alkek Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX¶Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, FL.
    • Ann. Surg. 2017 May 1; 265 (5): 993-999.

    ObjectiveTo determine whether postacute care (PAC) facilities can compensate for increased mortality stemming from a complicated postoperative recovery (complications or deconditioning).BackgroundAn increasing number of patients having cancer surgery rely on PAC facilities including skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers to help them recover from postoperative complications and the physical demands of surgery. It is currently unclear whether PAC can successfully compensate for the adverse consequences of a complicated postoperative recovery.MethodsWe combined data from the Veterans Affairs Cancer Registry with the Surgical Quality Improvement Program to identify veterans having surgery for stage I-III colorectal cancer from 1999 to 2010. We used propensity matching to control for comorbidity, functional status, postoperative complications, and stage.ResultsWe evaluated 10,583 veterans having colorectal cancer surgery, and 765 veterans (7%) were discharged to PAC facilities whereas 9818 veterans (93%) were discharged home. Five-year overall survival after discharge to PAC facilities was 36% compared with 51% after discharge home. Stage I patients discharged to PAC facilities had similar survival (45%) as stage III patients who were discharged home (44%). Patients discharged to PAC facilities had worse survival in the first year after surgery (hazard ratio 2.0, 95% confidence interval 1.7-2.4) and after the first year (hazard ratio 1.4, 95% confidence interval 1.2-1.5).ConclusionsDischarge to PAC facilities after cancer surgery is not sufficient to overcome the adverse survival effects of a complicated postoperative recovery. Improvement of perioperative care outside the acute hospital setting and development of better postoperative recovery programs for cancer patients are needed to enhance survival after surgery.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…