A recent study reveals that over one-third of surgical patients experience complications.
Research published on November 13 in the BMJ indicates that approximately 38% of adult patients encounter adverse events either during or after surgery.
Alarmingly, nearly half of these complications can lead to serious, life-threatening, or even fatal outcomes.
The study also highlights that “nearly half of the events classified as major and most potentially preventable,” demonstrating “that adverse events remain widespread in contemporary healthcare, causing substantial and preventable patient harm during hospital admission.”
This leads researchers to call into question “the foundational tenet of medical practice, ‘First, do no harm,’ [that] serves as a guiding principle for ensuring patient safety. However, adverse events during hospital admission are a major and widespread cause of harm in healthcare.”
The research team, led by Dr. Antoine Duclos from the University Claude Bernard Lyon in France, per U.S. News, concluded that adverse events are prevalent in modern healthcare, resulting in significant and avoidable harm to patients while they are hospitalized.
Notably, the study suggests that surgeons are not the sole contributors to these complications. The report emphasizes that issues extend beyond the operating room, involving healthcare professionals across the entire hospital environment.
The newly published study analyzed a random sample of 1,009 surgical admissions at 11 hospitals in Massachusetts during the year 2018. Among these, complications were reported in 383 cases, accounting for 38% of the surgeries, with significant adverse events occurring in 160 cases, which represents 16%. The results indicate that 49% of the complications stemmed directly from the surgical procedures, while 27% were associated with adverse drug events, 12% were related to healthcare-associated infections, and 11% involved hospital-related concerns such as falls or pressure ulcers.
Researchers pointed out that many of these incidents could have been avoided, with about a quarter of all patients facing potentially preventable adverse events and one in ten enduring complications that were probably or definitely preventable.
The general care unit had the most adverse events, accounting for 289 incidents (48.8% of all cases). This was followed by the operating room, with 155 incidents (26.1%); the intensive care unit, with 77 incidents (13.0%); and smaller numbers in the recovery room (20 incidents, 3.3%), emergency department (11 incidents, 1.8%), and other hospital areas (42 incidents, 7.0%).
The research indicated that incidents occurring in operating rooms or intensive care units were generally more severe than those in the general care unit.
The majority of these incidents involved attending physicians (531 incidents, or 89.5%), with nurses involved in 349 incidents (58.9%), residents in 294 incidents (49.5%), advanced-level practitioners in 169 incidents (28.5%), and fellows in 68 incidents (11.5%).
“Our findings suggest that errors persist in surgery, indicating the need to reassess how the structure of healthcare contributes to these ongoing challenges,” reads the study.
Potential reasons for these complications may include physician burnout, inadequate nursing staff, and an absence of technology used to identify and prevent health problems.