Impact of Patient Frailty on Morbidity and Mortality after Common Emergency General Surgery Operations

Frailty has been increasingly recognized as a modifiable risk factor prior to elective general surgery. There is limited evidence regarding the association of frailty with perioperative outcomes after specific emergency general surgery procedures.

A retrospective cohort study of 57,173 patients older than 40 y of age from 2010 to 2014 American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program underwent appendectomy, cholecystectomy, large bowel resection, small bowel resection, or nonbowel resection (lysis of adhesion, ileostomy creation) on an emergent basis. Preoperative modified frailty index (mFI) was determined for each patient and was used in a multivariable logistic regression to determine the association with perioperative morbidity, mortality, and discharge destination.

A total of 57,173 patients (46% men, mean [SD] age 60 [13] y) underwent an emergency appendectomy (n = 26,067), cholecystectomy (n = 8138), large bowel resection (n = 12,107), small bowel resection (n = 6503), or nonbowel resection (n = 4358). Among them, 14,300 (25.0%) experienced any perioperative complication, and 12,668 (22.2%) experienced a serious complication with an overall 30-d mortality of 5.1%. Highly frail patients had a 30-d mortality of 19.0% across all five operations. In multivariable analysis, mFI was associated with any complication and 30-d mortality in a step-wise fashion for each emergency operation. Intermediate and high mFI were also inversely associated with discharge home for each operation.

Frailty is associated with increased perioperative morbidity and mortality in common emergency general surgery operations. Frailty should be assessed by surgeons to inform decisions on operative intervention and to inform patients/families on expected outcomes.