WP 2.27: Temporal Changes of Postoperative Complications in the Era of Minimally Invasive Surgery for Cancer

Over the past two decades, the implementation of minimally invasive procedures has markedly changed surgical cancer treatments. This may have led to fewer complications in cancer patients but, on the other hand, may also have led to fewer restrictions on who is deemed suitable for surgery, which could potentially increase the number of complications if more high-risk patients undergo surgery. Thus, it remains uncertain whether the number of complications and the distribution of surgical and medical complications have changed over the last decades.
This project aims to examine the time trends of complications and identify the most important postoperative complications after colorectal and lung cancer surgery. Furthermore, within the framework of ACROBATIC, we aim to develop a methodological setup that can be transferred to other cancer types.
The project will be conducted using the Danish health registries and quality databases enriched with electronic medical record data. We will describe the risks of surgical and medical postoperative complications over time. Furthermore, we will identify the complications having the potentially highest impact on unfavorable outcomes including 30-day mortality and readmission risk, risk of prolonged hospitalization, and reoperation.
We expect that this project will provide results that will inform clinicians about the most important complications and inform clinicians about whether they should revise their postoperative observation and be more focused on some types of complications than they have been before. Furthermore, we expect that quality improvement programs supported by information obtained from this project will lead to better prevention and treatment of complications.

Awarded to: Christian Fynbo Christiansen (Department of Clinicla Epidemiology, Aarhus University) – CFA2

Awarded grant to support VIP personnel.