Differences in Surgical Risk Evaluation by Surgical Risk Calculator, Residents and Senior Anesthesiologists

Understanding the risks of surgery is clearly important for both patients and surgeons in the shared decision making process. Informed consent requires that patients have a thorough understanding of the potential risks of surgery. Moreover, clinicians and patients also need information regarding surgical risks in order to make decisions on the type of operation or whether surgery should be performed at all.

Therefore, there is a need to discuss the risks derived empirically with a specific patient before any action to guide both surgical decision-making and informed consent.

However, predicting postoperative risks and identifying patients at a higher risk of adverse events have traditionally been based on individual surgeon experience and augmented by published rates in the literature, either from single institution studies or clinical trials. Unfortunately, these estimates are typically not specific to an individual Patient's risk factors. The ACS (American College of Surgeons) Surgical Risk Calculator estimates the chance of an unfavorable outcome (such as a complication or death) after surgery. The risk is estimated based upon information the patient gives to the healthcare provider about prior health history. The estimates are calculated using data from a large number of patients who had a surgical procedure similar to the one the patient may have.