Editor's Note The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) Surgical Risk Calculator accurately estimates the risk of postoperative complications, and the calculator’s performance would improve with recalibration, this study finds. The statistical analysis for this study was based on 2.7 million surgical records collected between…

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Editor's Note The number of colonoscopies reported through the GI Quality Improvement Consortium (GIQuIC) registry reached 3 million cases in April, PRNewswire reports. CIQuIC is a national registry that allows endoscopists and endoscopy facilities to benchmark themselves and encourages quality improvement. Participants contribute real-time, procedure-related data to the registry, which…

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Editor's Note Arthroscopic surgery may not be the best option for patients over 60 years of age with hip arthritis, this study finds. Though most patients prefer minimally invasive hip arthroscopy rather than total hip replacement, researchers from the Hospital for Special Surgery, New York City, found that more than…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 18 announced the recall by Well Care Compounding Pharmacy of all sterile compounded products because of concern over lack of sterility assurance. The recall is for Nevada and impacts all sterile compounded products distributed between January 1 and April 29,…

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Editor's Note In this study from Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, payments for colectomy under Medicare’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative were lower than a fee-for-service payment model, and the proportion of patients contributing to a net negative margin increased. Net negative margins were calculated as the difference between total hospital…

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Editor's Note In this study, Medicare patients having common surgical procedures at critical access hospitals had no significant difference in 30-day mortality than those at noncritical access hospitals (5.4% vs 5.6%), and they had lower rates of serious complications (6% vs 14%) and lower expenditures ($14,450 vs $15, 845). The…

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Editor's Note By 2035, cardiothoracic surgeons will be responsible for more than 850,000 surgical patients, a 61% increase from 2010, according to this study presented May 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in Baltimore. Cases per surgeon per year in 2010 averaged 135 for…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission announced on May 18 that it had updated its Quality Check website. The website, launched in 1996, allows customers to search for accredited and certified organizations by city, state, name, zip code, or Joint Commission identification number. The updated site also lets customers search by services…

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Editor's Note This study from the University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora, identifies the most frequently touched surfaces in the OR and their level of contamination. The top high touch surface was the anesthesia computer mouse, followed by the OR table, nurse computer mouse, OR door, and anesthesia cart. Using the…

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Editor's Note In this study, a nonpunitive and collaborative peer methodology for assessing endoscope reprocessing at five Johns Hopkins GI endoscopy sites (three hospital based and two ASCs) was successful in capturing and sharing best practices for cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization of endoscopes. The assessments showed that 20 (42%) of…

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