The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery
-
J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. · Jan 2022
Correlation between perioperative outcomes and long-term survival for non-small lung cancer treated at major centers.
The public is placing increased emphasis on specialty specific rankings, thereby affecting patients' choices of clinical care programs. In the spirit of transparency, public reporting initiatives are underway or being considered by various surgical specialties whose databases rank programs based on short-term outcomes. Of concern, short-term risk avoidance excludes important comparative cases from surgical database participation and may adversely affect overall long-term oncologic treatment team results. To assess the validity of comparing short-term perioperative and long-term survival outcomes of all patients treated at major centers, we studied the correlations between these variables. ⋯ Short-term perioperative outcome rankings correlate poorly with long-term survival outcome rankings when cancer treatment centers are compared. Factors explaining this discrepancy merit further study. Rankings based on short-term outcomes alone may be incomplete for public reporting.