A tool to calculate surgery risks for a particular patient is being used in heart surgery and will eventually be adopted to other surgical specialties, but access is still limited to mainly larger hospitals, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
The American College of Surgeons, which developed the heart surgery tool, recently introduced a similar tool for surgery of the colon and pancreas and plans to eventually cover 20 different types of surgery.
Surgeons enter the patient's risk variables and receive a customized report outlining the risk of death and specific complications. The colorectal risk calculator, for example, is based on 15 variables, including age, body mass index, the extent of disease and how much of the colon must be removed.
Calculations are based on data from more than one million patient records gathered by National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, which works with hospitals to reduce surgical errors and complications.
The college adapted the tool from a Veterans Administration program that reduced deaths from surgery at VA hospitals by 27 percent and complications by 45 percent.
However, access to the college's risk calculator is limited to about 250 mostly large hospitals that are in its National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, which charges $35,000 a year to participating institutions.
Read Wall Street Journal's report on the surgical risk calculator.