Prevalence of relevant early complications during the first 24 h on a normal ward in patients following PACU care after medium and major surgery: a monocentric retrospective observational study

Purpose: Even today, it remains a challenge for healthcare professionals to decide whether a clinically stable patient who is recovering from uncomplicated medium or major surgery would benefit from a postoperative intensive care unit (ICU) admission, or whether they would be at least as adequately cared for by a few hours of monitoring in the post-operative care unit (PACU).

Methods: In this monocentric retrospective observational study, all adult patients who (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Anästhesiologie und Intensivmedizin (DGAI) in Anästh Intensivmed (50):S486-S489, 2009) underwent medium or major surgery between 1 January 1 2014 and 31 December 2018 at the Heidelberg University Surgical Center, and (Vimlati et al. in Eur J Anaesthesiol September 26(9):715-721, 2009) were monitored for 1-12 h in the PACU, and then (De Pietri et al. in World J Gastroenterol 20(9):2304-23207, 2014) transferred to a normal ward (NW) immediately thereafter were included. At the end of the PACU stay, each patient was cleared by both a surgeon and an anesthesiologist to be transferred to a NW. The first objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of relevant early complications (RECs) within the first 24 h on a normal ward. The secondary objective was to determine the prevalence of RECs in the subgroup of included patients who underwent partial pancreaticoduodenectomy.

Results: A total of 10,273 patients were included in this study. The prevalence of RECs was 0.50% (confidence interval [CI] 0.40-0.60%), with the median length of stay in the PACU before the patient's first transfer to a NW being 285 min (interquartile range 210-360 min). In the subgroup of patients who underwent partial pancreaticoduodenectomy (n = 740), REC prevalence was 1.1% (CI = 0.55-2.12%).

Conclusion: Based on a medical case-by-case assessment, it is possible to select patients who after a PACU stay of only up to 12 h have a low risk of emergency readmission to an ICU within the 24 h following the transfer to the NW. Continued research will be needed to further improve transfer decisions in such low-risk subgroups.