Surgery deaths drop nationwide for high-risk surgeries

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-06/uomh-sdd060111.php

Public release date: 1-Jun-2011
Contact: Shantell M. Kirkendoll
University of Michigan Health System

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Surgery death rates have dropped nationwide over the past decade, according to a University of Michigan Health System study that reveals cancer surgeries have seen the most dramatic improvement in safety.

The U-M study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine shows surgery mortality dropped substantially for eight different high-risk surgeries performed on 3.2 million Medicare patients from 1999 to 2008.

More patients are surviving open heart surgery and replacement of diseased aortic valves, but research shows high volume hospitals and their expertise drove a 67 percent decline in deaths for pancreatectomy, a 37 percent decline in deaths from cystectomy, surgery to remove the bladder, and a 32 percent drop in esophagectomy mortality.

"Patients should take solace in knowing that all high-risk surgeries have become safer in the last decade," says lead author Jonathan F. Finks, M.D., clinical assistant professor of surgery at the U-M Health System. "In cancer surgery, in particular, mortality has dropped in large part because more patients are having their surgery in safer, higher volume hospitals."

One of the more interesting findings by the U-M's Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy is that hundreds of low-volume U.S. hospitals stopped doing high-risk cancer surgery.

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