07
Jul 2015
Death rate from bowel surgery too high
Experts who have conducted an audit of care across England and Wales have warned that the number of patients who are dying following emergency bowel surgery is too high.
Currently 10% of patients undergoing urgent and unplanned laparotomies die within 30 days of surgery, and the authors of the audit say that some of the deaths could be avoided. This emergency procedure is carried out on over 30,000 patients each year in hospitals in England and Wales.
The team from the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit found that care was substandard at some hospitals for these patients, and that the best treatment and appropriate supervision was not always on hand.
The procedure, which is carried out under general anaesthetic, entails making an incision to carry out surgery inside the abdomen to treat life-threatening conditions such as bowel perforation, obstruction or a bleed.
Clare Marx, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who is concerned at the high mortality rate for the procedure, said “This audit demonstrates patients are still not accessing a consistently high standard of care from initial assessment through to post-operative care”.
Iain Anderson, the audit’s lead surgeon, said that many clinical teams had reviewed and improved the way they delivered care, and asked for other hospitals to follow suit.
He said “The audit is an essential step in helping all involved measure and continue that development and in indicating particularly to weaker teams how they might improve services and save lives.”
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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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