Pain and Nausea in the Post-anesthesia Care Unit Following Gallbladder Surgery - a Registry Study Using National Data From Gallriks and the Swedish Perioperative Register (SPOR)

The project is a registry study with linked data from the Swedish national registry for gallbladder surgery (Gallriks) and the Swedish Perioperative Register (SPOR).

In SPOR, multiple variables are recorded and the main categories include patient characteristics, process data (e.g., times, operating room, planning, cancellations), surgical data (diagnosis, procedure, anesthesia type, times, deviations), and postoperative data (e.g., pain, nausea, complications, times, postoperative care level). The main variables of interest in this project are postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) and pain. In SPOR, it is possible to register whether the patient experienced nausea or vomiting and to assess pain in the immediate postoperative period during the stay at the postoperative recovery unit (PACU). The mean time of stay at PACU after gallbladder surgery in Sweden is 3.5 hours.

Gallriks records data related to gallstone surgery, including preoperative factors (including patient's illness), surgical processes, and postoperative outcomes up to 6 months after surgery.

The investigators have estimated that it is possible to include at least 50% of all gallstone surgeries in Sweden, which corresponds to a range of 7,000-8,000 patients per year.

Both quality registers are housed at the Uppsala Clinical Research Center (UCR), which will perform the data linkage. The data extraction process will start with the surgical cases in Gallriks and match them with SPOR. The database delivered to the research group will contain only pseudonymized personal data, with personal identification numbers and names removed.