JAMA surgery
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Current outcome predictors for illness and injury are measured at a single time point-admission. However, patient prognosis often changes during hospitalization, limiting the usefulness of those predictions. Accurate depiction of the dynamic interaction between competing events during hospitalization may enable real-time outcome assessment. ⋯ Real-time measurement of dynamic interrelationships among burn outcome predictors using competing risk analysis demonstrated that the key factors influencing outcomes differed throughout hospitalization. Further application of this analytic technique to other injury or illness types may improve assessment of outcomes.
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Individualized risk prediction tools have an important role as decision aids for use by patients and surgeons before surgery. Patient-centered outcomes should be incorporated into such tools to widen their appeal and improve their usability. ⋯ Individualized risk of discharge to postacute care can be predicted with excellent accuracy. This outcome will be incorporated into the ACS NSQIP Surgical Risk Calculator.
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Significant health inequities persist among minority and socially disadvantaged patients. Better understanding of how unconscious biases affect clinical decision making may help to illuminate clinicians' roles in propagating disparities. ⋯ Unconscious social class and race biases were not significantly associated with clinical decision making among acute care surgical clinicians. Further studies involving real physician-patient interactions may be warranted.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Overtreatment of young adults with colon cancer: more intense treatments with unmatched survival gains.
Colon cancer is increasing among adults younger than 50 years. However, the prognosis of young-onset colon cancer remains poorly defined given significant age-related demographic, disease, and treatment differences. ⋯ Young adults with colon cancer received significantly more postoperative systemic chemotherapy at all stages, but they experienced only minimal gain in adjusted survival compared with their older counterparts who received less treatment. This mismatch suggests that attention should be given to long-term cancer survivorship in young adults with colon cancer because they likely face survivorship needs that are distinct from those of their older counterparts.