Postoperative adverse events inconsistently improved by the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist: a systematic literature review of 25 studies
de Jager, Elzerie, McKenna, Chloe, Bartlett, Lynne, Gunnarsson, Ronny, and Ho, Yik-hong (2016) Postoperative adverse events inconsistently improved by the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist: a systematic literature review of 25 studies. World Journal of Surgery, 40 (8). pp. 1842-1858.
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Abstract
Background: The World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) has been widely implemented in an effort to decrease surgical adverse events.
Method: This systematic literature review examined the effects of the SSC on postoperative outcomes. The review included 25 studies: two randomised controlled trials, 13 prospective and ten retrospective cohort trials. A meta-analysis was not conducted as combining observational studies of heterogeneous quality may be highly biased.
Results: The quality of the studies was largely suboptimal; only four studies had a concurrent control group, many studies were underpowered to examine specific postoperative outcomes and teamwork-training initiatives were often combined with the implementation of the checklist, confounding the results. The effects of the checklist were largely inconsistent. Postoperative complications were examined in 20 studies; complication rates significantly decreased in ten and increased in one. Eighteen studies examined postoperative mortality. Rates significantly decreased in four and increased in one. Postoperative mortality rates were not significantly decreased in any studies in developed nations, whereas they were significantly decreased in 75 % of studies conducted in developing nations.
Conclusions: The checklist may be associated with a decrease in surgical adverse events and this effect seems to be greater in developing nations. With the observed incongruence between specific postoperative outcomes and the overall poor study designs, it is possible that many of the positive changes associated with the use of the checklist were due to temporal changes, confounding factors and publication bias.
| Item ID: | 45361 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1432-2323 |
| Keywords: | surgical complications, checklist |
| Additional Information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Aug 2016 00:08 |
| FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320226 Surgery @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920204 Evaluation of Health Outcomes @ 100% |
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