Objective: Compare survival of head and neck cancer (HNC) patients treated with surgical or non-surgical management according to frailty, quantify frailty with the Risk Analysis Index (RAI), a validated 14-item instrument.
Materials And Methods: Prospective cohort study of newly diagnosed HNC patients (≥18 years) who had frailty assessment from April 13, 2016 to September 30, 2016. Primary outcome was overall survival at 1- and 3-years.
Background: Processes for transferring patients to higher acuity facilities lack a standardized approach to prognostication, increasing the risk for low value care that imposes significant burdens on patients and their families with unclear benefits. We sought to develop a rapid and feasible tool for predicting mortality using variables readily available at the time of hospital transfer.
Methods And Findings: All work was carried out at a single, large, multi-hospital integrated healthcare system.
Background: The aim of this analysis is to compare the postoperative outcomes of resection and enucleation of small pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs).
Methods: The 2014-17 American College of Surgeons-NSQIP dataset was queried. Patients undergoing pancreatoduodenectomy (N = 297) or distal pancreatectomy (N = 712) for nonfunctional, small PNETs (T1/T2) were compared to 127 patients (11%) who were enucleated.
Objective: This study aimed to develop risk predictive models of 30-day mortality, morbidity, and major adverse limb events (MALE) after bypass surgery for aortoiliac occlusive disease (AIOD) and to compare their performances with a 5-Factor Frailty Index.
Methods: The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program 2012-2017 Procedure Targeted Aortoiliac (Open) Participant Use Data Files were queried to identify all patients who had elective bypass for AIOD: femorofemoral bypass, aortofemoral bypass, and axillofemoral bypass (AXB). Outcomes assessed included mortality, major morbidity, and MALE within 30 days postoperatively.
Background: Pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) is often performed in frail patients and is associated with significant morbidity. The five-factor modified frailty index (mFI-5) has been utilized to predict adverse postoperative outcomes, but has not been tested in PD. We aimed to develop risk tools to generate and predict 30-day outcomes after PD and compare their performance with the mFI-5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Frailty is a marker of dependency, disability, hospitalization, and mortality in community-dwelling older adults. However, existing tools for measuring frailty are too cumbersome for rapid point-of-care assessment. The Risk Analysis Index (RAI) of frailty is validated in surgical populations, but its performance outside surgical populations is unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The goal of this project was to first address barriers to implementation of the Risk Analysis Index (RAI) within a large, multi-hospital, integrated healthcare delivery system, and to subsequently demonstrate its utility for identifying at-risk surgical patients.
Background: Prior studies demonstrate the validity of the RAI for evaluating preoperative frailty, but they have not demonstrated the feasibility of its implementation within routine clinical practice.
Methods: Implementation of the RAI as a frailty screening instrument began as a quality improvement initiative at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in July 2016.
Objective: Our aims were to assess North American trends in the management of patients undergoing pancreatoduodenectomy (PD) and distal pancreatectomy (DP), and to quantify the delivery of optimal pancreatic surgery.
Background: Morbidity after pancreatectomy remains unacceptably high. Recent literature suggests that composite measures may more accurately define surgical quality.
Background: Higher MELD scores correlate with adverse operative outcomes regardless of the presence of liver disease, but their impact on pancreatectomy outcomes remains undefined. We aimed to compare 30-day adverse postoperative outcomes of patients undergoing elective pancreatectomy stratified by MELD score.
Methods: Elective pancreatoduodenectomies (PDs) and distal pancreatectomies (DPs) were identified from the 2014-2016 ACS NSQIP Procedure Targeted Pancreatectomy Participant Use Data Files.
Objective And Background: The Risk Analysis Index (RAI) predicts 30-, 180-, and 365-day mortality based on variables constitutive of frailty. Initially validated, in a single-center Veteran hospital, we sought to improve model performance by recalibrating the RAI in a large, veteran surgical registry, and to externally validate it in both a national surgical registry and a cohort of surgical patients for whom RAI was measured prospectively before surgery.
Methods: The RAI was recalibrated among development and confirmation samples within the Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program (VASQIP; 2010-2014; N = 480,731) including major, elective noncardiac surgery patients to create the revised RAI (RAI-rev), comparing discrimination and calibration.
Objective: To develop a conceptual computational agent-based model (ABM) to explore community-wide versus spatially focused crime reporting interventions to reduce community crime perpetrated by youth.
Method: Agents within the model represent individual residents and interact on a two-dimensional grid representing an abstract nonempirically grounded community setting. Juvenile agents are assigned initial random probabilities of perpetrating a crime and adults are assigned random probabilities of witnessing and reporting crimes.