The introduction of a Neurosurgical Postoperative Checklist improved quality of care and patient safety.

Neurosurgical patients are often complex and require high quality, attentive care in the immediate postoperative period. We identified a number of issues in our department pertaining to patient safety and the assessment and management of patients following handover of care to the neurosurgical ward, and intervened with an aim to provide safe, timely, patient-centred, and procedure-specific care in the postoperative period. We reviewed the records of 50 patients between (Aug-Oct 2015) and analysed quality of postoperative assessment, prescriptions, and adherence to national standards of postoperative care.

Pre-operative obesity does not predict poorer symptom control and quality of life after lumbar disc surgery.

Purpose: We aimed to determine whether there was a difference in post-operative symptomatic control and quality of life (QoL) between patients who were obese (BMI >30) and non-obese (BMI <30) pre-operatively. This information may inform the decision making of Physicians and patients whether to proceed to surgery for management of symptomatic lumbar disc prolapse.

Methods: We conducted a prospective questionnaire-based study of QoL and symptom control in 120 patients with postal follow-up at 3 and 12 months after lumbar disc surgery.