Long-term surgical outcomes in the UK population
Approximately 5 million in-patient surgical procedures are performed each year, accounting for 8% of the NHS budget. Around 50,000 patients die within 30 days of surgery, but the demographics and long-term survival of high-risk patients remains uncertain.
We will perform a detailed analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data describing an estimated 15 million NHS major surgery episodes from 2005-2015 to evaluate long-term mortality and secondary healthcare use following in-patient surgery or selected non-surgical alternatives .We will then confirm how the demographics and co-morbidities of high-risk patients differ from the low-risk majority within the surgical population. This will allow us to develop clearly defined perioperative risk, and establish the relationship between risk and outcome. We will compare these findings to data describing outcomes for patients receiving non-surgical treatments for the same diseases.