Abstract
Aim
The study aimed to compare the frequency and alignment of preoperative anaemia screening and treatment with Australian guidelines in elective bowel surgery and determine the impact on clinical outcomes.
Methods
We performed a retrospective observational study, with an audit of 559 adult patients who underwent major elective bowel surgery in an Australian metropolitan hospital, January 2016–December 2018. Outcome measures included rate of anaemia, guideline compliance, hospital length of stay, and transfusion rate.
Results
Preoperative anaemia assessment occurred in 82.6% of patients. However, only 5.2% received recommended biochemical tests at least one week before surgery. Only 25.2% of anaemic patients received preoperative treatment; they experienced a longer hospital length of stay (9.93 days versus 7.88 days, p < 0.001) and an increased rate of transfusion (OR: 3.186, p < 0.05).
Conclusion
The gaps between current preoperative anaemia screening, management and national guidelines may place patients at higher risk of poor surgical outcome.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
