Defining complexity in anaesthesia: description and validation of the Oxford Anaesthetic Complexity (OxAnCo) score.

ABSTRACT: Increasing demand for surgery and anaesthesia has created an imperative to manage anaesthetic workforce and caseload. This may include changes to distribution of cases amongst anaesthetists of different grades, including non-physician anaesthetists. To achieve this safely, an assessment of case complexity is essential. We present a novel system for scoring complexity of cases in anaesthesia, the Oxford Anaesthetic Complexity score. This integrates patient, anaesthetic, surgical and systems factors, and is different from assessments of risk. We adopted an end-user development approach to the design of the score, and validated it using a dataset of anaesthetic cases. Across 688 cases, the median (IQR [range]) complexity score was 19 (17-22 [15-33]). Cases requiring a consultant anaesthetist

SUBMITTER: Ridgeon E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9805154 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature