Performance of the Emergency Surgery Score (ESS) Across Different Emergency General Surgery Procedures

The Emergency Surgery Score (ESS) has been previously validated as a reliable tool to predict postoperative outcomes in emergency general surgery (EGS). The purpose of this study is to assess the differential performance of the ESS in specific EGS procedures.

The American College of Surgeons' National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database was retrospectively analyzed for patients undergoing EGS between 2007 and 2017. Patients who underwent the following EGS procedures were identified: laparoscopic appendectomy, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, surgery for small bowel obstruction (SBO), colectomy, and incarcerated ventral or inguinal hernia repair. The performance of the ESS in predicting mortality in each procedure was assessed using receiver operating characteristic analyses.

A total of 467,803 patients underwent EGS (mean age 50 ± 19.9 y, females 241,330 [51.6%]), of which 191,930 (41%) underwent laparoscopic appendectomy, 40,353 (8.6%) underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy, and 35,152 (7.5%) patients underwent surgery for SBO. The ESS correlated extremely well with mortality for patients who underwent laparoscopic appendectomy (area under the curve (AUC) 0.91), laparoscopic cholecystectomy (AUC 0.91), lysis of adhesions for SBO (AUC 0.83), colectomy (AUC 0.83), and incarcerated hernia repair (AUC 0.85).

ESS performance accurately predicts mortality across a wide range of EGS procedures, and its use should be encouraged for preoperative patient counseling and for nationally benchmarking the quality of care of EGS.