Safety in Allowing Residents to Independently Perform Appendectomy: A Retrospective Review

In an era of competency-based education and concern about graduating resident readiness for practice, early resident autonomy and the ability to safely teach junior residents is becoming increasingly important. In this study, we aimed to understand the effect of "teaching resident" (2 residents operating under the supervision of an attending physician) appendectomy cases on outcomes.

We performed a single-center retrospective review of 928 patients who underwent appendectomy within the University of Wisconsin hospital system, from October 2014 to December 2017. We examined how 2 residents (compared with 1 resident with an attending) attempting a case affected operation time, surgical site infection (SSI) rate, conversion to open rate, postoperative CT scanning, and readmission rate, while controlling for sex, age, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) class, BMI, previous lower abdominal surgery, acuity, perforation, and presence of a junior attending.

We identified 597 1-resident cases and 331 2-resident or "teaching resident" cases. We performed multiple logistic regression to assess teaching resident cases as a predictor of postoperative outcomes. There were no significant differences in postoperative surgical site infection (superficial or organ space) odds ratio (OR) = 0.83 (95% CI, 0.47, 1.45); p = 0.51, conversion to open OR = 1.10 (95% CI, 0.46, 2.60); p = 0.84, postoperative CT scanning OR = 0.82 (95% CI, 0.48, 1.35); p = 0.42, or readmission within 30 days OR = 0.76 (95% CI, 0.40, 1.44); p = 0.40. However, teaching resident operative times were more likely to be classified as prolonged OR = 1.44 (95% CI, 1.03, 2.01); p = 0.03.

Senior surgical trainees can safely supervise more junior trainees performing appendectomy procedures, and training programs should encourage faculty to allow residents to not only manage operative appendicitis as independently as possible, but to supervise junior residents in the intraoperative management of appendicitis.