Standardised metrics for global surgical surveillance

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Services Research
• Global Surgery

Background:

• Standardized metrics are crucial for evaluating disease burden and health system performance.
• Surgical services lack established public health metrics despite significant costs and adverse outcomes.
• The World Health Organization's Safe Surgery Saves Lives initiative addresses this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and define standardized public health metrics for surgical care.
• To create feasible and practical measures for assessing surgical services at a population level.
• To integrate these metrics into global guidelines for safe surgery.

Main Methods:

• Convened an international expert panel to define metrics.
• Identified six key measures for national surgical service assessment.
• Assessed data collection feasibility in eight diverse hospitals across eight countries.

Main Results:

• Recommended six national-level metrics: operating rooms, operations, accredited surgeons, accredited anesthesia professionals, day-of-surgery death ratio, and postoperative in-hospital death ratio.
• Demonstrated feasibility of collecting these statistics in diverse international settings.
• Incorporated metrics and data collection methods into WHO Guidelines for Safe Surgery.

Conclusions:

• Standardized public health metrics for surgical care are now available.
• These metrics provide a framework for evaluating surgical services globally.
• Implementation of these metrics can improve understanding and performance of surgical care worldwide.