United States: A new study shows that more than one-third of people who have surgery face problems because of it. About 38% of patients experience complications during or after surgery. Almost half of these problems are very serious and can even be life-threatening.
The good news is that many of these problems could have been prevented—about 60% of them could have been stopped with better care, and 21% definitely could have been prevented.
As reported by HealthDay, “Thus, adverse events continue to occur frequently within modern healthcare and lead to severe and preventable patient harm during hospitalization,” the authors of the study spearheaded by Dr. Andre Duclos who works at the University Claude Bernard Lyon in France stated.
But the researchers said that surgeons are not alone being blamed for these complications.
As reported by the HealthDay, “These occurrences were not limited to surgeries and operating rooms but cut across almost all health care professionals within the hospital,” their report said.
In the study, more than 1,000 patients who underwent surgery were included across eleven hospitals in Massachusetts in 2018.
Distribution of complications in surgeries is as follows: total of 383 (38%) out of patients developing at least one postoperative complication; Of these, 160 (16%) patients experienced at least one major surgical complication.
Re-operations after operation accounted to 49% of complications followed by adverse drug reactions at 27%, health care associated infections at 12% and the remaining 11% being hospital complications such as falls and pressure injuries.
Surgical complications were identified of which 50% were obtained in general care wards, 26% in operating theaters and 13% in ICU.
Worse still, most of these complications, researchers said could have been avoided.
In their journal news release, the researchers said that about one-fourth of all patients had at least one potentially preventable adverse event; and one in 10 concerned events which where probably or definitely preventable.
Possible reasons for these complications could include doctor burnout, insufficient nurse staffing, and failure to leverage technology that could help identify and prevent the health issues, as the executive editor of an accompanying editorial by Helen Haskell, president of Mothers Against Medical Error.
But these events also continue to happen because there has been little movement in ‘enrolling’ patients and families to help unravel what makes complications happen, Haskell also said.