Systematic review of hospital-wide complication registries

An institutional registry covering all surgical specialties could be an implementation tool in quality benchmarking between hospitals and aid determination of their cost-effectiveness. The objective of this systematic literature review was to evaluate original articles on existing prospective surgical registries that can be used by single institutions across surgical specialties.

A systematic review of the literature using PRISMA guidelines was conducted for articles focusing on hospital-wide surgical registries. Single-specialty retrospective registries, non-defined outcome measures or system protocols, and studies not in English were excluded.

Five articles were included for analysis. Evaluation of the articles revealed wide methodological heterogeneity in the classification and categorization of complications and data collection methods.

Ideal surgical quality monitoring systems should be real-time, contain patient-related risk factors, and encompass all surgical specialties. At present, such institutional registries are rarely reported and no consensus exists on their standard definitions and methodology.