Impact of resident involvement on cervical and lumbar spine surgery outcomes

Resident involvement in the operating room is a vital component of their medical education. Conflicting and limited research exists regarding the effects of surgical resident participation on spine surgery patient outcomes.

To determine the effect of resident involvement on surgery duration, length of hospital stay and 30-day postoperative complication rates in common spinal surgery using the American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database.

Multicenter retrospective cohort study.

A total of 1,441 patients met the inclusion criteria: 1,142 patients had surgeries with an attending physician alone and 299 patients had surgeries with trainee involvement. All anterior cervical or posterior lumbar surgery patients were identified. Patients who had missing trainee involvement information, surgery for cancer, preoperative infection or dirty wound classification, spine fractures, traumatic spinal cord injury, intradural surgery, thoracic surgery, and emergency surgery were excluded.

The main outcomes of interest analyzed from the ACS-NSQIP database included surgical complications, medical complications, length of hospital stay, and surgery duration.

Propensity score for risk of any complication was calculated to account for baseline characteristic differences between the attending alone and trainee present group. Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate the impact of resident involvement on surgery duration, length of hospital stay, and 30-day postoperative complication rates.

After adjusting using the calculated propensity score, the multivariate analysis demonstrated that there was no significant difference in any complication rates between surgeries involving trainees compared to surgeries with attending surgeons alone. Surgery times were found to be significantly longer for surgeries involving trainees. To further explore this relationship, separate analyses were performed for tertiles of predicted surgery duration, cervical or lumbar surgery, fusion or nonfusion, and inpatient or outpatient surgery. The effect of trainee involvement on increasing surgery time remained significant for medium predicted surgery duration, longer predicted surgery duration, cervical surgery, lumbar surgery, fusion surgery, and inpatient surgery. There were no significant differences reported for any other factors.

After adjusting for confounding, we demonstrated in a national database that resident involvement in surgeries did not increase complication rates. We demonstrated that surgeries with more complex features may lead to an increase in operative time when trainees are involved. Further study is required to determine how to efficiently integrate resident involvement in surgeries without affecting their medical education.