Detection of the Frail Elderly at Risk of Postoperative Sepsis

Sarría-Santamera A. Yessimova D. Viderman D. Polo-deSantos M. Glushkova N. Semenova Y.
January 2023 MDPI

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
2023 #20 Issue 1

With the increase in the elderly population, surgery in aged patients is seeing an exponential increase. In this population, sepsis is a major concern for perioperative care, especially in older and frail patients. We aim to investigate the incidence of sepsis in elderly patients receiving diverse types of surgical procedures and explore the predictive capacity of the Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) to identify patients at high risk of incidence of postoperative sepsis. This study relies on information from the Spanish Minimum Basic Data Set, including data from nearly 300 hospitals in Spain. We extracted records of 254,836 patients aged 76 years and older who underwent a series of surgical interventions within three consecutive years (2016–2018). The HFRS and Elixhauser comorbidity index were computed to determine the independent effect on the incidence of sepsis. Overall, the incidence of postoperative sepsis was 2645 (1.04%). The higher risk of sepsis was in major stomach, esophageal, and duodenal (7.62%), followed by major intestinal procedures (5.65%). Frail patients are at high risk of sepsis. HFRS demonstrated a high predictive capacity to identify patients with a risk of postoperative sepsis and can be a valid instrument for risk stratification and vigilant perioperative monitoring for the early identification of patients at high risk of sepsis.

elixhauser comorbidity index , frail elderly , hospital frailty risk score , sepsis , Spain

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Department of Medicine, Nazarbayev University School of Medicine, Astana, 010000, Kazakhstan
Agency for Health Technology Assessment, Institute of Health Carlos, Madrid, 28029, Spain
Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Evidence Based Medicine, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, 050040, Kazakhstan

Department of Medicine
Agency for Health Technology Assessment
Department of Epidemiology

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