The Perioperative NonaGEnaRIan And cenTenarian suRgICal (GERIATRIC) Risk Stratification Tool

To develop age-appropriate nonaGEnaRIan And cenTenarian suRgICal (GERIATRIC) risk tool for classifying patients who may or may not develop postoperative complications or die within their index hospital admission.

There are no validated perioperative risk stratification tools for use in nonagenarian and centenarian patients-people aged 90 to 99 years and >100 years.

In this retrospective observational study, nonagenarians and centenarians undergoing any surgical procedure were profiled. Surgery severity was stratified, and the incidence and grade of postoperative complications were recorded. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed on a training cohort, followed by calibration on a validation cohort, followed by performance evaluation on a testing cohort. The discriminative accuracy was compared to that of the age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index for each outcome. The primary outcome was the ability of the risk stratification tool to effectively classify patients into those who may or may not experience a postoperative complications or mortality within their index hospital stay.

A total of 3085 patients were enrolled. The GERIATRIC risk tool had good discriminative accuracy for any postoperative complication [area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC), 0.857; 95% CI = 0.824-0.890] and any severe postoperative complication (AUROC, 0.833; 95% CI = 0.793-0.874), and fair discriminative accuracy for in-hospital mortality (AUROC, 0.780; 95% CI = 0.668-0.893).

Compared to the age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index, The GERIATRIC risk tool was accurate in classifying patients into those who may or may not experience severe complications or die during their index admission. The tool can be used to assist perioperative clinicians with shared decision-making and short-term prognostication.