Performance Comparison Between SURPAS and ACS NSQIP Surgical Risk Calculator in Pulmonary Resection

Accurate preoperative risk assessment is critical for informed decision making. The Surgical Risk Preoperative Assessment System (SURPAS) and the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) Surgical Risk Calculator (SRC) predict risks of common postoperative complications. This study compares observed and predicted outcomes after pulmonary resection between SURPAS and NSQIP SRC.

Between January 2016 and December 2018, 2514 patients underwent pulmonary resection and were included. We entered the requisite patient demographics, preoperative risk factors, and procedural details into the online NSQIP SRC and SURPAS formulas. Performance of the prediction models was assessed by discrimination and calibration.

No statistically significant differences were found between the 2 models in discrimination performance for 30-day mortality, urinary tract infection, readmission, and discharge to a nursing or rehabilitation facility. The ability to discriminate between a patient who will develop a complication and a patient who will not was statistically indistinguishable between NSQIP and SURPAS, except for renal failure. With a C index closer to 1.0, the NSQIP performed significantly better than the SURPAS SRC in discriminating risk of renal failure (C index, 0.798 vs 0.694; P = .003). The calibration curves of predicted and observed risk for each model demonstrate similar performance with a tendency toward overestimation of risk, apart from renal failure.

Overall, SURPAS and NSQIP SRC performed similarly in predicting outcomes for pulmonary resections in this large, single-center validation study with moderate to good discrimination of outcomes. Notably, SURPAS uses a smaller set of input variables to generate the preoperative risk assessment. The addition of thoracic-specific input variables may improve performance.