Clinical trial NCT05097066: Patterns and Outcomes of Neurosurgery in England Over a Five-year Period
Official title: Patterns and Outcomes of Neurosurgery in England Over a Five-year Period: a National Retrospective Cohort Study
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Surgery
Surgery--Complications
Neurological Morbidity
Neurological Diseases or Conditions
Neurological Disorder
Neurological Complication
Neurological Procedural Complication
Outcome, Fatal
Comorbidities and Coexisting Conditions
Morality
Lead sponsor: University of Leeds
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: The Royal College of Surgeons of England
First posted: 2021-10-27
Enrollment: 371418
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: RETROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: All admissions to neurosurgical units in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. This covers any patients in England who required neurosurgical care, except those admitted to Private Providers of neurosurgical care.

Brief summary: Neurosurgical practice has seen many important changes over several decades with advances in treatments and the types of patients treated. Neurosurgical procedures have evolved, and as outcomes have improved the number of patients being treated has increased.

There are no recent evaluations of national neurosurgical practice in the United Kingdom (UK), with the last prospective cohort studies being Safe Neurosurgery 1993 and Safe Neurosurgery 2000. More recent studies of neurosurgical services have been based on data from single institutions or surgeons and these may not give a representative picture of practice nationally.

Recent national quality improvement programmes for neurosurgery in England (such as the National Neurosurgical Audit Programme (NNAP) and Cranial Neurosurgery and Spinal Surgery Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programmes) have focused on using national hospital administrative datasets. To be effective, quality improvement initiatives require robust outcome measures and quality (process) indicators. Currently, there is a lack of validated quality indicators for neurosurgery, with practice often being described using generic measures such as readmission and reoperation rates and length of stay. Many studies have been able to derive these common outcome measures, but it may also be possible to produce indicators specific to neurosurgery.

The aim of this observational study was firstly to describe the current pattern of neurosurgical admissions and procedures in England, and thereby given an overview of the epidemiology of neurosurgical patients. Secondly, it aims to investigate the range of outcome measures that might be produced from hospital administrative data and use these to assess the quality of care in neurosurgery.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* All admissions to neurosurgical units in the National Health Service (NHS) in England.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Records with poor quality data (e.g. no data for clinical diagnoses).
* Patients under 18 years that were admitted to an adult neurosurgical unit.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Length of stay
timeFrame: From date of admission to date of discharge from hospital; assessed up to 60 months.
measure: Additional inpatient neurosurgical procedure rate
timeFrame: From date of admission to date of discharge from hospital; assessed up to 60 months.
measure: Proportion of patients discharged home
timeFrame: Determined on date of discharge from hospital; assessed up to 60 months.
measure: In-patient mortality rate
timeFrame: From date of the neurosurgical procedure through date of death from any cause (in-patient deaths only); assessed up to 60 months.
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: University of Leeds
name: Ryan Mathew
role: STUDY_CHAIR
References: