Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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The goal of this study was to examine the association between patient complications and admission to Level I trauma centers (TC) compared with nontrauma centers (NTC). ⋯ Trauma centers have a slightly higher incidence rate of complications, even after adjusting for patient case mix. Aggressive treatment may account for a significant portion of TC-associated complications. Pulmonary artery catheter use and intubation had the most influence on overall TC complication rates. Additional study is needed to provide accurate benchmark measures of complication rates and to determine their causes.
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African Americans have a poorer survival from gastrointestinal cancers. We hypothesized that socioeconomic status may explain much of this disparity. ⋯ These data suggest that improvements in screening and rates of operation may reduce differences in colorectal cancer outcomes between African-American and Caucasian patients. But race has little influence on survival of patients with pancreatic, esophageal, or gastric cancer.
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Development of surgical skills on inanimate models has been popularized by efforts to improve patient safety and efficiency of resident training. We evaluated whether surgical residents' acquisition of videoscopic suturing skill is accelerated by reviewing video of their own previous practice session. ⋯ Development of videoscopic suturing skill is augmented by independent review of earlier attempts. Knot quality and technique are improved, with a trend toward increased speed. This minimal-cost method of enhancing skill training for junior residents parallels the effectiveness of video review in fields such as aviation and athletics.
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Reoperation rate has gained increasing attention as a potential indicator of surgical quality. Objectives of this study were to examine the feasibility of assessing reoperation rates at 182 hospitals to identify institutions with outlying performance, to examine potentially modifiable factors that are associated with reoperations, and to determine if a more parsimonious logistic regression model effectively predicts reoperations. ⋯ There is considerable variability in reoperation rates at American College of Surgeon's National Surgical Quality Improvement Program hospitals. American College of Surgeon's National Surgical Quality Improvement Program data can be used to provide individual hospitals with risk-adjusted self-assessment data on reoperations to potentially identify quality-improvement opportunities.