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April 20, 2022

Outcome Measurement in Pancreatic Surgery—A Shift Toward Holistic Assessment

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of General Surgery, Fondazione Poliambulanza Istituto Ospedaliero, Brescia, Italy
  • 2Department of Surgery, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Cancer Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
JAMA Surg. 2022;157(7):559-560. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2022.0628

Over the last few decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on outcome measurement in surgical care. Patients’ and society’s expectations have been rising in parallel with hospitals’ and physicians’ ambitions to offer the best patient care and the most positive patient experience. In pancreatic surgery, outcome measurement is of particular importance, owing to the wide variation in outcomes between hospitals and countries. Huge efforts have been devoted to improve outcomes in pancreatic surgery, including centralization, introduction of minimally invasive approaches, enhanced recovery protocols, and novel adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy protocols. Currently, several prospective national and international registries collect data of pancreatic resections for safety monitoring and quality assessment.1 Furthermore, results from multiple randomized clinical trials in different clinical fields have significantly enriched the available body of evidence, and more are to be expected. As we are now entering the stage of optimizing patients’ treatments and management plans based on a multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach, the need for defining clear measurement tools is rising.

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1 Comment for this article
Outcomes progress
Harald Aanning, md | retired surgeon
A very thoughtful presentation by Drs. de Graf and Hilal that would have merited much praise from Ernest A. Codman, the Boston surgeon who initiated operative outcomes studies over 100 years ago...
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: None Reported
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