Association of Acute Care Surgeon Involvement With Post-Surgery Complications

Acute care surgeons are experts in trauma treatment, emergency surgery, and critical surgical care. Here, we analyzed the association of acute care surgeons on postoperative outcomes of emergency general surgery.

This retrospective study included 92 patients who underwent emergency general surgery at our institution between January 2020 and September 2021. Propensity score matching was used to analyze postoperative outcomes. The primary outcome was postoperative complications, while secondary outcomes included perioperative management and surgery-related and postoperative complications. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the odds ratios for all complications. In this study, acute care surgeons were defined as acute care surgery (ACS)-certified surgeons by the Japanese Society for Acute Care Surgery.

Overall, 30 patients were treated by an acute care surgeon and general surgeons (ACS group), and 62 patients were treated by general surgeons (non-ACS group), respectively. Propensity score matching identified 30 patients with balanced baseline covariates, in each group. The ACS group had lower complication rates (Clavien-Dindo classification ≥2) than the non-ACS group (17% versus 40%, P = 0.08). The ACS group had a significantly shorter surgery duration than the non-ACS group (75 min versus 96 min, P = 0.014). In the logistic analysis, acute care surgeon involvement was identified as an independent predictor for the decrease in all complications (odds ratio, 0.15; 95% confidence interval, 0.02-0.64).

It was suggested that the involvement of acute care surgeons may reduce the overall complication rate in emergency general surgery.