Association between timing of operative interventions and mortality in emergency general surgery

Emergency general surgery (EGS) often demands timely interventions, yet data for triage and timing are limited. This study explores the relationship between hospital arrival-to-operation time and mortality in EGS patients.

We performed a retrospective cohort study using an EGS registry at four hospitals, enrolling adults who underwent operative intervention for a primary American Association for the Surgery of Trauma-defined EGS diagnosis between 2021 and 2023. We excluded patients undergoing surgery more than 72 hours after admission as non-urgent and defined our exposure of interest as the time from the initial vital sign capture to the skin incision timestamp. We assessed the association between operative timing quintiles and in-hospital mortality using a mixed-effect hierarchical multivariable model, adjusting for patient demographics, comorbidities, organ dysfunction, and clustering at the hospital level.

A total of 1199 patients were included. The median time to operating room (OR) was 8.2 hours (IQR 4.9-20.5 hours). Prolonged time to OR increased the relative likelihood of in-hospital mortality. Patients undergoing an operation between 6.7 and 10.7 hours after first vitals had the highest odds of in-hospital mortality compared with operative times <4.2 hours (reference quintile) (adjusted OR (aOR) 68.994; 95% CI 4.608 to 1032.980, p=0.002). A similar trend was observed among patients with operative times between 24.4 and 70.9 hours (aOR 69.682; 95% CI 2.968 to 1636.038, p=0.008).

Our findings suggest that prompt operative intervention is associated with lower in-hospital mortality rates among EGS patients. Further work to identify the most time-sensitive populations is warranted. These results may begin to inform benchmarking for triaging interventions in the EGS population to help reduce mortality rates.

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