Defining reasonable patient standard and preference for shared decision making among patients undergoing anaesthesia in Singapore

WALANT surgery of the hand: state of the art

Wide-awake local anesthesia no tourniquet is named the WALANT technique. WALANT has had a major positive impact on cost, convenience, ecology, patient satisfaction, access to surgical care, and outcomes in hand surgery in the last 20 years. Safe and efficient application of the technique is based on two principles. The first principle is the tumescent injection of a large volume low concentration 0.25-1% lidocaine, with 1:100 000-1:400 000 epinephrine. The second principle of WALANT is that the proper injection should be almost painless, with the patient only feeling the first needle poke of a tiny 30G needle. This wide awake patient approach reduces pain, neuropraxia, and systemic side effects of sedation with preservation of motor control, thereby aiding balanced reconstruction in hand surgery.

Patient knowledge of surgical informed consent and shared decision-making process among surgical patients in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Informed consent is one of the safeguarding of the patient in medical practice at different standards such as ethical, legal, and administrative purposes. Patient knowledge and perception of informed consent are one of the priority concerns in surgical procedures. Patient knowledge and perception towards informed consent increased patient satisfaction, feeling high power on their determination, and accountability for the management, and facilitated positive treatment outcomes. Despite this, in Ethiopia, there are small-scale primary studies with inconsistent and inconclusive findings. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis study estimated the pooled prevalence of patient knowledge and perception of informed consent and its determinants in Ethiopia.

METHODS

We searched major databases such as PubMed, Hinary, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Scopus, African Journal Online (AJO), Semantic Scholar, Google Scholar, google, and reference lists. Besides this, University databases in the country were also searched from August 20, 2023, until September 30, 2023,. All published and unpublished studies that report the prevalence of patient knowledge and perception toward informed consent and its associated factors were included. All studies reported in English were included. Studies conducted between January 01, 2015 to September 30, 2023 were included. There are three outcome measurements pooled level of patient knowledge towards informed consent, pooled level of patient perception towards informed consent, and pooled effect that affects patient knowledge of informed consent. Three reviewers (MMM, NK, and YT) independently screened the articles that fulfilled the inclusion criteria to avoid the risk of bias. The studies' quality was appraised using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) version.

RESULTS

The pooled prevalence of appropriate patient knowledge and perception towards informed consent was 32% (95% CI: 21, 43) and 40% (95% CI: 16, 65) respectively. Having formal education 2.69 (95% CI: 1.18, 6.15) and having a history of signed informed consent before 3.65 (95% CI:1.02,13.11) had a statistically significant association with good patient knowledge towards informed consent.

CONCLUSION

The appropriate patient knowledge and perception of informed consent in Ethiopia is low. Formal education and history of signed informed consent were positive factors for appropriate patient knowledge of informed consent in Ethiopia. Physicians, policymakers, and health facility managers should focus on patients without prior experience with signed informed consent and not have formal education to improve patient knowledge towards informed consent. The protocol was registered at Prospero with number CRD42023445409 and is available from: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/#myprospero .

Transforming the perioperative medicine care model: The Singapore experience

More than 300 million surgeries are performed worldwide annually. Established perioperative centres in the UK, USA and Australia have demonstrated the impact of improving perioperative care in reducing costs, increasing patient satisfaction and improving population health. Likewise, the surgical burden of care in Asia is increasing, but with sociocultural, economic and epigenetic differences compared to the west. As Singapore's largest hospital, the Singapore General Hospital pre-admission perioperative clinic sees about 20,000 patients annually. We aim to illustrate Singapore General Hospital's perioperative model of care to contribute to the paucity of literature describing perioperative programme implementation within Asia, and to encourage the cross-sharing of perioperative practices internationally. Our perioperative framework navigates risk assessment, risk counselling, and mitigation of health, medical and functional risks to better patients' perioperative outcomes and population health. We have implemented evidence-based pathways for common conditions such as anaemia and malnutrition, including a multidisciplinary programme for the elderly to tackle frailty and reduce length of stay. We describe how we have enhanced local risk profiling with the Combined Assessment of Risk Encountered in Surgery surgical risk calculator derived locally using a gradient boosting machine learning model. Finally, we report clinical outcomes of these interventions and discuss further challenges and new initiatives at each tier of our perioperative model. Our perioperative care model provides a framework that other centres can adopt to promote value-driven care, while catering for differences in the Asian population, thereby promoting evidence-based improvements in the area of perioperative medicine.

Advance care planning: comparing the views of residents and healthcare professionals in nursing homes in Singapore

BACKGROUND

With more frail elderly living and likely to die in nursing homes, advance care planning (ACP) is critical in overall efforts to provide good palliative care. However, it is unclear how willing older, vulnerable residents in nursing homes are to take on an active role in care decisions.

AIM

The objective of this pilot study was to examine nursing homes' healthcare professionals' and residents' views on ACP and the extent of similarities and differences in their views.

METHODS

Our sample of 24 healthcare professionals and 24 residents were identified and recruited through contacts established from existing collaborations with the nursing homes. Surveys were administered to the participants by a trained research assistant between April 2015 and August 2015.

RESULTS

Almost all the healthcare professionals (95.8%) would like to make an ACP for themselves in the future, while residents were divided in their choices (P<<0.01). Most residents (79.1%) felt that the most important guide for their surrogate in making decisions for them when they lose decision-making capacity should be based on their best interests. However, most healthcare professionals (75.0%) felt that it should be based on the resident's wishes and values.

CONCLUSIONS

Healthcare professionals tended to overestimate the importance of patient autonomy compared to the residents. This study demonstrates that as much as advocacy and awareness are ongoing, nursing home residents' motivation to participate in ACP is lacking. The lack of motivation in ACP participation could be due to medical paternalism and familial determination, which have been a cultural norm for older Singaporeans. This study demonstrates there is a lack of cultural sensitivity in this group of healthcare professionals in approaching nursing home residents' end-of-life care decision-making.

Utilizing Machine Learning Methods for Preoperative Prediction of Postsurgical Mortality and Intensive Care Unit Admission

Objective:

To compare the performance of machine learning models against the traditionally derived Combined Assessment of Risk Encountered in Surgery (CARES) model and the American Society of Anaesthesiologists-Physical Status (ASA-PS) in the prediction of 30-day postsurgical mortality and need for intensive care unit (ICU) stay >24 hours.

Background:

Prediction of surgical risk preoperatively is important for clinical shared decision-making and planning of health resources such as ICU beds. The current growth of electronic medical records coupled with machine learning presents an opportunity to improve the performance of established risk models.

Methods:

All patients aged 18 years and above who underwent noncardiac and nonneurological surgery at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) between 1 January 2012 and 31 October 2016 were included. Patient demographics, comorbidities, preoperative laboratory results, and surgery details were obtained from their electronic medical records. Seventy percent of the observations were randomly selected for training, leaving 30% for testing. Baseline models were CARES and ASA-PS. Candidate models were trained using random forest, adaptive boosting, gradient boosting, and support vector machine. Models were evaluated on area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC).

Results:

A total of 90,785 patients were included, of whom 539 (0.6%) died within 30 days and 1264 (1.4%) required ICU admission >24 hours postoperatively. Baseline models achieved high AUROCs despite poor sensitivities by predicting all negative in a predominantly negative dataset. Gradient boosting was the best performing model with AUPRCs of 0.23 and 0.38 for mortality and ICU admission outcomes respectively.

Conclusions:

Machine learning can be used to improve surgical risk prediction compared to traditional risk calculators. AUPRC should be used to evaluate model predictive performance instead of AUROC when the dataset is imbalanced.

Socio-economic differences in patient participation behaviours in doctor-patient interactions-A systematic mapping review of the literature

Background

The degree to which patients participate in their care can have a positive impact on health outcomes. This review aimed to map the current literature on patient participation behaviours in interactions with physicians and the extent to which differences in these behaviours can be explained by socio‐economic status (SES).

Search strategy

Four electronic databases were searched from 1980 onwards using key words related to socio‐economic status and patient participation behaviours.

Study selection

Titles, abstracts and full texts were screened by two reviewers, with the second reviewer screening 20% of all entries.

Data extraction

Data on year of publication, country, patient population, setting, patient participation behaviour studied, and SES measure used were extracted.

Main results

Forty‐nine studies were included in the review. Most studies were conducted in the United States, and the most commonly studied patient participation behaviour was involvement in decision making. Most studies measured SES using education as an indicator, with very few studies using occupation as a measure. Many studies did not report on participants’ medical condition or study setting. Patient participation in their health‐care appointment increased with increasing SES in 24 studies, although in 27 studies no significant association was found.

Discussion and conclusions

Current literature was found to be mainly US‐centric. Many studies did not specify participants’ medical condition or in what setting the study was undertaken. More studies are needed on less commonly studied patient participation behaviours. It would be helpful for further studies to also include a wider range of SES indicators.

Informed consent, shared-decision making and a reasonable patient's wishes based on a cross-sectional, national survey in the USA using a hypothetical scenario

OBJECTIVE

In approximately half the states in the USA, and more recently in the UK, informed consent is legally defined as what a reasonable patient would wish to know. Our objective was to discern the information needs of a hospitalised, 'reasonable patient' during the informed-consent process.

DESIGN

We performed a cross-sectional study to develop a survey instrument and better define 'reasonable person' in relation to informed consent in a hypothetical scenario where an invasive procedure may be an option.

SETTING

A 10-question survey was administered from April 19 through 22 October 2018 to three groups: student nurses (n=76), health professions educators (n=63) and a US national population (n=1067).

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES

The primary outcome measure was the average intensity, on a 5-point scale, by which survey groups wished to have each of 10 questions answered. The secondary outcome was to discern relationships between survey demographics and the intensity by which participants wanted an answer.

RESULTS

Despite substantial demographic differences in the nursing-student group and health-professions-educator group, the average intensity scores were within 0.2 units on nine of 10 questions. The national survey revealed a strong desire to have an answer to each question (range 3.98-4.60 units). It showed that women desired answers more than men and older adults desired answers more than younger adults.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on responses to 10 survey questions regarding wishes of people in a situation where an invasive procedure may be necessary, the vast majority want an answer to each question. They wanted to know about all treatment options, risky drugs, decision aids, who will perform the procedure, and the cost. They wanted their advocate present, periodic review of their medical record, a full day to review documents and expected outcomes and restrictions after the procedure.

Preferences and attitudes of young Chinese clinicians about using a shared decision making tools for communicating cardiovascular risk

OBJECTIVE

This study assesses the attitudes and preferences of Chinese clinicians toward their involvement in shared decision making (SDM).

METHODS

From May 2014 to May 2015, 200 Chinese clinicians from two hospitals were enrolled to complete a survey on their attitude towards SDM. We conducted the survey via face-to-face interviews before and after an educational intervention on SDM among young Chinese clinicians. The clinicians were asked to give the extent of agreement to SDM. They also gave the extent of difficulty in using decision aids (DAs) during the SDM process. The variation in the range of responses to each question before and after the SDM intervention was recorded. The frequency of changed responses was analyzed by using JMP 6.0 software. Data were statistically analyzed using Chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests, as appropriate to the data type. Multiple logistic regressions were used to test for those factors significantly and independently associated with preference for an approach for each scenario.

RESULTS

Of the 200 young Chinese clinicians sampled, 59.0% indicated a preference for SDM and a desire to participate in SDM before receiving education or seeing the DA, and this number increased to 69.0% after seeing the DA with the sample video of the SDM process on Statin Choice. However, 28.5% of the respondents still reported that, in their current practice, they make clinical decisions on behalf of their patients. The clinicians who denied a desire to use the DA stated that the main barriers to implement SDM or DA use in China are lack of time and knowledge of SDM.

CONCLUSIONS

Most young Chinese clinicians want to participate in SDM. However, they state the main barriers to perform SDM are lack of experience and time. The educational intervention about SDM that exposes clinicians to DAs was found to increase their receptivity.

Improving surgical informed consent in obstetric and gynaecologic surgeries in a teaching hospital in Ethiopia: A before and after study

OBJECTIVES

Even though surgical informed consent (SIC) has marked benefits, in many settings the information is not provided appropriately. In Ethiopia, minimal attention is given to SIC. This study assesses whether an intervention designed to improve SIC in obstetric and gynaecologic surgeries is associated with receipt of SIC components.

DESIGN

Pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys were conducted at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital among women who underwent obstetric or gynaecologic surgeries. The intervention consisted of a 3-day training on standard counselling for surgical procedures offered to health professionals. A total of 457 women were surveyed (230 pre-intervention, 227 post-intervention). An adjusted Poisson regression analysis was used to identify the association between the intervention and the number of SIC components received.

RESULTS

The majority of participants were 25-34 years of age in both the pre-intervention and post-intervention groups (p=0.66). 45.7% of the pre-intervention and 51.5% of the post-intervention survey participants underwent elective surgery (p=0.21). Additionally, 70.4% of pre-intervention survey participants received counselling immediately before surgery, compared with 62.4% of post-intervention participants (p<0.001). 5.7% of pre-intervention and 6.6% of post-intervention participants reported the belief that SIC consists entirely of signing on a piece of paper (p=0.66). After controlling for effects of potential confounders, the number of SIC components reported by post-intervention survey participants was 16% higher than what is received by pre-intervention ones (adjusted coefficient=1.16 (1.06-1.28)). Having elective versus emergency surgery was not associated with the number of components received by participants in either group (adjusted coefficient=0.98 (0.88-1.09)).

CONCLUSION

Training on the delivery of standard SIC is associated with receipt of a higher number of standard counselling components. However, there is a need to evaluate whether a one-time intervention leads to sustained improvement. A system-wide study of factors that promote SIC is required.

Creating a Pathway for Multidisciplinary Shared Decision-Making to Improve Communication During Preoperative Assessment

Shared decision-making (SDM) is essential for high-quality surgical care. Barriers to SDM exist in clinical practice but there is evidence these obstacles can be overcome. SDM requires clinician and patient engagement. Though patients may indicate understanding, deficits in decision making may persist based on language, age, or educational barriers. Multidisciplinary decision-making before surgery is an opportunity for anesthesiologists and other perioperative professionals to improve surgical care. The authors present an example of a successfully implemented pathway for high-risk surgical patients at a tertiary care center, leveraging the preoperative anesthesia evaluation.

Preoperative ANemiA among the elderly undergoing major abdominal surgery (PANAMA) study: Protocol for a single-center observational cohort study of preoperative anemia management and the impact on healthcare outcomes

INTRODUCTION

Preoperative anemia and old age are independent risk factors for perioperative morbidity and mortality. However, despite the high prevalence of anemia in elderly surgical patients, there is limited understanding of the impact of anemia on postoperative complications and postdischarge quality of life in the elderly. This study aims to investigate how anemia impacts elderly patients undergoing major abdominal surgery in terms of perioperative morbidity, mortality and quality of life for 6 months postoperatively.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We will conduct a prospective observational study over 12 months of 382 consecutive patients above 65 years old, who are undergoing elective major abdominal surgery in Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a tertiary public hospital. Baseline clinical assessment including full blood count and iron studies will be done within 1 month before surgery. Our primary outcome is presence of morbidity at fifth postoperative day (POD) as defined by the postoperative morbidity survey (POMS). Secondary outcomes will include 30-day trend of POMS complications, morbidity defined by Clavien Dindo Classification system (CDC) and Comprehensive Complication Index (CCI), 6-month mortality, blood transfusion requirements, days alive out of hospital (DaOH), length of index hospital stay, 6-month readmission rates and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). HRQoL will be assessed using EuroQol five-dimensional instrument (EQ-5D) scores at preoperative consult and at 1, 3, and 6 months.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The SingHealth Centralised Institutional Review Board (CIRB Ref: 2017/2640) approved this study and consent will be obtained from all participants. This study is funded by the National Medical Research Council, Singapore (HNIG16Dec003) and the findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at academic conferences. Deidentified data will be made available from Dryad Repository upon publication of the results.

Preoperative Red Cell Distribution Width and 30-day mortality in older patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery: a retrospective cohort observational study

Increased red cell distribution width (RDW) is associated with poorer outcomes in various patient populations. We investigated the association between preoperative RDW and anaemia on 30-day postoperative mortality among elderly patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery. Medical records of 24,579 patients aged 65 and older who underwent surgery under anaesthesia between 1 January 2012 and 31 October 2016 were retrospectively analysed. Patients who died within 30 days had higher median RDW (15.0%) than those who were alive (13.4%). Based on multivariate logistic regression, in our cohort of elderly patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, moderate/severe preoperative anaemia (aOR 1.61, p = 0.04) and high preoperative RDW levels in the 3rd quartile (>13.4% and ≤14.3%) and 4th quartile (>14.3%) were significantly associated with increased odds of 30-day mortality - (aOR 2.12, p = 0.02) and (aOR 2.85, p = 0.001) respectively, after adjusting for the effects of transfusion, surgical severity, priority of surgery, and comorbidities. Patients with high RDW, defined as >15.7% (90th centile), and preoperative anaemia have higher odds of 30-day mortality compared to patients with anaemia and normal RDW. Thus, preoperative RDW independently increases risk of 30-day postoperative mortality, and future risk stratification strategies should include RDW as a factor.

Development of the Combined Assessment of Risk Encountered in Surgery (CARES) surgical risk calculator for prediction of postsurgical mortality and need for intensive care unit admission risk: a single-center retrospective study

INTRODUCTION

Accurate surgical risk prediction is paramount in clinical shared decision making. Existing risk calculators have limited value in local practice due to lack of validation, complexities and inclusion of non-routine variables.

OBJECTIVE

We aim to develop a simple, locally derived and validated surgical risk calculator predicting 30-day postsurgical mortality and need for intensive care unit (ICU) stay (>24 hours) based on routinely collected preoperative variables. We postulate that accuracy of a clinical history-based scoring tool could be improved by including readily available investigations, such as haemoglobin level and red cell distribution width.

METHODOLOGY

Electronic medical records of 90 785 patients, who underwent non-cardiac and non-neuro surgery between 1 January 2012 and 31 October 2016 in Singapore General Hospital, were retrospectively analysed. Patient demographics, comorbidities, laboratory results, surgical priority and surgical risk were collected. Outcome measures were death within 30 days after surgery and ICU admission. After excluding patients with missing data, the final data set consisted of 79 914 cases, which was divided randomly into derivation (70%) and validation cohort (30%). Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to construct a single model predicting both outcomes using Odds Ratio (OR) of the risk variables. The ORs were then assigned ranks, which were subsequently used to construct the calculator.

RESULTS

Observed mortality was 0.6%. The Combined Assessment of Risk Encountered in Surgery (CARES) surgical risk calculator, consisting of nine variables, was constructed. The area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC) in the derivation and validation cohorts for mortality were 0.934 (0.917-0.950) and 0.934 (0.912-0.956), respectively, while the AUROC for ICU admission was 0.863 (0.848-0.878) and 0.837 (0.808-0.868), respectively. CARES also performed better than the American Society of Anaesthesiologists-Physical Status classification in terms of AUROC comparison.

CONCLUSION

The development of the CARES surgical risk calculator allows for a simplified yet accurate prediction of both postoperative mortality and need for ICU admission after surgery.

How do Singapore patients view post-anaesthesia adverse outcomes? A single-centre willingness-to-pay study

INTRODUCTION

Knowing how patients value the quality of anaesthesia helps anaesthesiologists to customise their service. However, generalising findings from Western population-based willingness-to-pay studies across different cultures and societies might result in the oversight of some contextualised perspectives of the anaesthesia experience. This study aimed to capture the Singapore perspective of undesired post-anaesthesia outcomes.

METHODS

132 patients recruited in a pre-anaesthetic evaluation clinic were given questionnaires describing ten possible post-anaesthetic outcomes. Outcomes were ranked for undesirability and assigned relative value through the hypothetical proportioning of SGD 100 to avoid their occurrence. Data was analysed with reference to patients' background and anaesthetic history.

RESULTS

A response rate of 69.1% (n = 132/191) was achieved. Outcomes from the most to least undesirable were pain; vomiting; nausea; shivering; orodental trauma; sore throat; abrasions; somnolence; and thirst. Relative values allocated, in descending order, were pain; vomiting; nausea; orodental trauma; abrasions; sore throat; shivering; somnolence; and thirst.

CONCLUSION

Similar to previous studies in Western populations, pain, vomiting and nausea were the top three adverse outcomes that Singapore patients wished to avoid. However, discrepancies with Western patients were seen in spending attitudes, possibly accounted for by differences in healthcare socioeconomics. This study provided a better understanding of Singapore patients' perspectives on post-anaesthesia adverse outcomes and could help to improve treatment strategy and resource management.