Overt diabetes mellitus adversely affects surgical outcomes of noncardiovascular patients

It is known that cardiac surgical patients with diabetes have greater peri-operative mortality and morbidity when compared with nondiabetic patients; the rate of adverse events in other surgery subspecialties has been only investigated minimally. The aim of this study was to test the magnitude of association between overt diabetes mellitus and postoperative complications across a spectrum of noncardiac surgical patients.

Prospective outcome data registries describing 1,343 data sets from a spectrum of surgical subspecialties were examined to establish the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, the incidence of intra- and postoperative complications, and the difference in proportion of morbidity between diabetic versus nondiabetic patients.

There was a significant difference in overall morbidity between diabetic and nondiabetic patients with a 2.0 and 1.6 times increased morbidity risk in known diabetic patients with and without malignancy, respectively. Known diabetes was related to the number of postoperative complications in noncardiovascular patients.

This study quantified the association between known diabetes and the occurrence of complications during recovery after a spectrum of noncardiac surgery. Because of a high prevalence of prediabetic and undiagnosed conditions, the strength of associations between glucose dysregulation and operative outcomes may be even greater than we report.