The surgical Apgar score is strongly associated with intensive care unit admission after high-risk intraabdominal surgery.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Understanding intensive care unit (ICU) triage decisions for high-risk surgical patients may ultimately facilitate resource allocation and improve outcomes. The surgical Apgar score (SAS) is a simple score that uses intraoperative information on hemodynamics and blood loss to predict postoperative morbidity and mortality, with lower scores associated with worse outcomes. We hypothesized that the SAS would be associated with the decision to admit a patient to the ICU postoperatively.

Methods

We performed a retrospective cohort study of adults undergoing major intraabdominal surgery from 2003 to 2010 at an academic medical center. We calculated the SAS (0-10) for each patient based on intraoperative heart rate, mean arterial blood pressure, and estimated blood loss.

SUBMITTER: Sobol JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4020414 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature