CPET and surgical outcomes in the PQIP dataset
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding perioperative risk: an analysis of the strength of association of preoperative cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) and routinely collected patient risk factors with post-operative outcomes in the PQIP database. Does CPET add value?
IRAS ID
299046
Contact name
Alison Knight
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Southampton
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 31 days
Research summary
Undergoing surgery is not without risk and it is well known that poor health and fitness increase a person’s chances of experiencing problems after their operation. These problems include longer stay in hospital, admission to intensive care, complications such as infection or the need for another operation and death. By identifying who is more likely to experience such complications, it is often possible to improve the health of “high-risk patients” prior to their operation.
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPET) provides an objective assessment of a person’s physical fitness and is being increasingly used to identify patients who are more likely to experience complications after surgery. Poor performance in CPET is associated with more problems after surgery. However previous studies have been conducted in small populations or populations who are particularly “healthy”.
This study aims to investigate in a large, representative patient group, how useful CPET is at predicting complications of surgery. In addition to this we would like to compare CPET to other patient factors, such as blood tests or anaesthetic risk assessment, to understand whether objective estimates of physical fitness are useful for identifying “high-risk patients” for surgery over these routinely collected measures.
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/WM/0189
Date of REC Opinion
29 Jul 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion