GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: AHRQ Patient Safety Network ► Point prevalence of surgical checklist use in Europe: relationship with hospital mortality.

In a point prevalence study in European hospitals, use of surgical checklist was associated with lower hospital mortality.Br J Anaesth. 2015 Jan 13; [Epub ahead of print].

Point prevalence of surgical checklist use in Europe: relationship with hospital mortality.

Jammer I, Ahmad T, Aldecoa C, et al; European Surgical Outcomes Study (EuSOS) group. Br J Anaesth. 2015 Jan 13; [Epub ahead of print].

The initial evidence supporting the impact of the World Health Organization's surgical safety checklist was a cohort study that found a significant reduction in mortality associated with the use of the checklist. More recently, the mandated adoption of surgical checklists in Canada failed to show any benefits on surgical outcomes. This retrospective point prevalence study evaluated checklist use in 426 hospitals across 28 European nations, involving more than 45,000 patients undergoing noncardiac inpatient surgery. Notably, there was striking variation in surgical checklist exposure, with checklists used for 0% to 99.6% of patients, depending on the nation. The use of surgical checklists was associated with lower hospital mortality, even after adjusting for risk factors. However, it is unclear from this study whether this improvement is due to the checklist or rather checklist usage is a process measure indicating higher overall perioperative quality. A prior AHRQ WebM&M perspective reviewed best practices for creating effective checklists.

PubMed citation