Patient Perspectives on Defining Textbook Outcomes Following Major Abdominal Surgery

The composite metric textbook outcome (TO) has recently gained interest as a novel quality measure. However, the criteria for defining a TO have not been rigorously defined and patient perspectives on the characteristics of TO are unknown.

Patients who underwent major abdominal surgery at a single tertiary care center were administered a customized survey designed to ascertain their perspectives on defining TOs. The relationship between patient-reported and clinically defined TO rates was compared.

Among 79 patients who underwent gastrointestinal (51%), pancreatic (29%), hepatic (18%), or other major abdominal (3%) operations, 57% were female and 86% had an ASA class ≥3. Most patients underwent surgery for malignancy (87%) with 60% undergoing an open operation. Patients most commonly valued no mortality following surgery (96%), no reoperation (75%), and having a margin negative resection (73%) as "extremely important." In contrast, those outcomes that were most commonly valued as "not important at all" or "minimally important" were receiving a blood transfusion (24%) and not having any complications (13%). Using previously published criteria for TOs, 47 (60%) patients were classified as having a clinically defined TO; in contrast, 68 patients (86%) self-reported their outcome was textbook. Self-reported responses were concordant with clinically defined TO criteria 63% of the time (McNemar's test: S=15.2, p<0.01, evidence of disagreement).

There was significant discordance between patient-reported versus clinically defined measures of TOs, suggesting patients value other considerations beyond traditional factors when evaluating the success of their surgery. Future studies should delineate these relationships and incorporate these factors to refine TO definitions.