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| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2014 | Volume
: 7
| Issue : 1 | Page : 7-11 |
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Anesthesia-related morbidity and mortality: where are we? A descriptive study
Bahaa Ewees, Yasser A Salem, Mohamed Saleh, Marwa A Khairy
Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
| Date of Submission | 13-Apr-2013 |
| Date of Acceptance | 09-May-2013 |
| Date of Web Publication | 31-May-2014 |
Correspondence Address:
Yasser A Salem
MD, 7, Bashar Ebn Bord st., Sixth district, Makram Ebied st. Nasr City, Cairo 11371
Egypt
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/1687-7934.128390
Background
Safe anesthesia practice is by default the ultimate target for every anesthesiologist. Mortality and morbidity discussions constitute the most important method to address this issue, although a well-designed productive mortality and morbidity discussion is rare. In this study we tried to initiate a project of a systematic mortality and morbidity analysis that could easily gather data about the incident. These data were statistically analyzable and could finally address the problem.
Materials and Methods
A total of 56 mortality and morbidity reports from July 2009 to August 2012 were reviewed. These were analyzed using a self-constructed chart. This chart was designed to achieve the goal of addressing the problem. This chart also assessed the degree of attribution of the incident to anesthesia, anticipation of the incidents, and the contributing factors that led to this incident.
Results
Equal distribution of the three main categories of contributing factors (preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative) was noticed, although 62% of the incidents could be easily gathered under a specific scenario of inappropriate preoperative management (20%) that led to improper choice of anesthesia (22%). Logically, this will lead to poor anticipation of intraoperative complications, followed by poor crisis management (14%) and finally insufficient postoperative management (6%). Hence, poor planning was responsible for 62% of the incidents. This result was supported by an almost similar percentage (65%) of unanticipated incidents. Moreover, 8% of the errors analyzed comprised system errors, which is a relatively high percentage.
Conclusion
Poor planning and nonanticipation of complications are the major problems that should be overcome by improving anesthesia planning. Also a stronger system is needed to minimize system errors. Keywords: Anesthesia planning, anesthesia safety, morbidity and mortality, system error
How to cite this article:
Ewees B, Salem YA, Saleh M, Khairy MA. Anesthesia-related morbidity and mortality: where are we? A descriptive study. Ain-Shams J Anaesthesiol 2014;7:7-11 |
How to cite this URL:
Ewees B, Salem YA, Saleh M, Khairy MA. Anesthesia-related morbidity and mortality: where are we? A descriptive study. Ain-Shams J Anaesthesiol [serial online] 2014 [cited 2023 Sep 24];7:7-11. Available from: http://www.asja.eg.net/text.asp?2014/7/1/7/128390 |
| Introduction | |  |
Anesthesia is considered a risk by itself as it represents alteration of human physiology that may lead to morbidity and mortality. However, a number of investigators have reported a decline in anesthesia-related mortality over the last two decades.
Marx et al. [1] reported a mortality of eight per 10 000 cases in the USA in 1973. Bodlander [2] reported a mortality incidence of six per 10 000 in Australia in 1975. In 1978, Harrison [3] reported three cases per 10 000. In France in 1980, Tiret et al. [4] reported an incidence of three per 10 000 cases. The incidence has dropped in the first decade of the new millennium to around one per 10 000 cases [5].
Variation in these incidents was found to be mostly due to variance in the definition of perioperative mortality among these reports, in addition to variation in the quality of care in different countries. For example, Brazilian studies showed higher perioperative mortality rates, from 19 to 51 deaths per 10 000 anesthetics [5]. To date we have not found any report on anesthesia-related mortality in Egypt. That is why we could not compare our quality of practice with that of others.
It is not easy to define anesthesia-related problems, especially after expanding the period of time during which these problems could occur from during surgery in 1954 [6] to 1 year after the surgical procedure in some cases in 2005 [7].
In 1987, the Edwards classification was published to categorize the contribution of anesthesia to the incident. The incidents were classified into four categories according to the attribution of anesthesia to the incident [8].
Anticipation of medical problems during the surgical procedure is the first mission for the anesthesiologist. Anticipation of problems is very important for proper management and more effective handling. Classification for the extent of anticipation of the problem was designed to facilitate description of the situation. This classification was inspired from the ANZCA review of anesthesia-related mortality in Australia and New Zealand published in 2005 [9].
| Materials and Methods | | |
Between July 2009 and August 2012, 56 morbidity and mortality reports were discussed by a Morbidity and Mortality Committee in the Anesthesia Department of Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine. Confidentiality was ensured by not revealing the primary data in the reports examined.
These reports were analyzed using a self-constructed chart. This chart was designed to ensure uniformity in the report analysis. It concentrates on the degree of attribution of anesthesia to the incident, anticipation of the problem and factors contributing to the event, and its sequence. It aims to identify the most frequent reason responsible for problems.
To ensure ease in filling of the chart, a key explaining how to use it was designed and printed on the back of the chart. This included the Edwards classification and anticipation classification in addition to clear definitions for system, communication, and human errors.
Attribution (Edwards) classification
- Class I: the event was totally caused by anesthesia or by other factors totally under the control of the anesthetist.
- Class II: similar to class I but there is some doubt that other factors may be incriminated in the event.
- Class III: combined anesthetic and surgical factors led to the event.
- Class IV: the event was totally caused by surgical factors or by others under the control of the surgical team, or the event was inevitable irrespective of anesthesia or surgery, or the event was incidental and could not be reasonably expected during surgery or anesthesia.
- Class F: failure to reach a convincing scenario, although all needed data are available.
- Class S: shortage of data due to the situation of the case.
To avoid incoherence and lack of uniformity in description of types of error, a clear definition of human, communication, and system errors was adopted.
Human error: defect in cognitive, psychomotor, or affective aspects in individual management, further subdivided into provider characteristics, error in judgment, and mishaps.
Communication error: other individual defects specially related to inter-relations between individuals.
System error: defect related to administration.
| Results | | |
Data collected from 56 mortality and morbidity reports were included in the mortality chart. These data were tabulated and analyzed.
Of the 56 reports, 38 (68%) were scheduled procedures.
Regarding the attribution of incidents to anesthesia, 20 of the 56 analyzed cases were totally attributed to anesthesia, with a percentage of 35% (class I). Combined attribution of anesthesia and surgical procedure was encountered in 39% of cases (class II and III). Only 25% of cases were not related to anesthesia practice (class IV).
Sixty-five percent of the incidents were not anticipated (class III and IV of anticipation classification), and 68% of the incidents were not managed properly (class II and IV).
An analysis of the frequency of factors that contribute to the occurrence of incidents revealed that intraoperative faulty anesthetic management was responsible for 59% of incidents; 20% related to preoperative management and another 16% related to postoperative management. All data are presented in the following table.
An analysis of the types of errors that contribute to the incidents revealed the following: 78% were human errors, 13% were communication errors, and 8% were system errors. These suggest a relatively high percentage of system errors, although this item was probably underestimated because of difficulty in system identification or lack of a solid system in some situations.
| Discussion | | |
Anesthesia is considered a medical service provided to patients. Assessment of the quality of this service is mandatory for improvement. Moreover, evaluation of the contribution of anesthesia to perioperative mortality is mandatory in order to improve the safety and quality of care [10] [Figure 1].
We considered the quality assurance cycle and selected the point of monitoring the existing practice to enter the cycle.
Reporting and analyzing mortality related to anesthesia is important for identifying avoidable causes, for reviewing trends, and for formulating strategies for prevention. One of the major problems in reporting and comparing mortality incidents is lack of uniformity and solid definitions, especially in developing countries. Although we did not find any previous reports on Egyptian anesthesia practice, we had to maintain clear-cut standards while initiating this kind of report.
Hence, our main goal was to identify the most frequent problems behind perioperative morbidity and mortality in our practice, and we did not concentrate on the crude mortality rate. We tried to systematically analyze mortality and morbidity reports in a more objective way to direct our academic efforts toward the most common malpractices.
In an analysis presented by Harrison [11] on anesthesia-related mortality in Cape Town, South Africa, a six-fold decrease was reported over 30 years, from 1956 to 1987. It was believed that this change was due to intellectual response to information collected about these incidents.
The most frequent single contributing factor found was defective crisis management, which accounted for 13% of cases. Crisis management constitutes the most controllable area in anesthesia practice. This means that this relatively large portion of defective practice could be easily overcome by improved education and practice and by following the core algorithm (COVER-ABCD algorithm) and other subalgorithms [12]. The training course should be designed to educate anesthesia staff about when and how to use those algorithms.
Inadequate preoperative preparation and management accounted for 20% of the contributing factors in our report. Different studies from other developed countries reported a 40-45% contribution of preoperative management to incidents [13,14]. To our knowledge our number is underestimated because of lack of adequate registration and reporting, although a Pakistani study has reported a figure of only 12%; this Pakistani study was performed in Aga Khan University Hospital, which is one of the most renowned institutes in medical service in Pakistan [15]. This wide variation in number is mostly due to lack of uniformity in definition and in data analysis in addition to defects in data collection and reporting in such countries.
In our study 68% of cases were not managed properly, indicating that the remaining 32% of incidents were inevitable. This rate is relatively low in comparison with that of other developing countries. Khan and Khan [15] reported 43% inevitable deaths in which anesthesia and surgical techniques were apparently satisfactory. Our relatively high rate could be explained by the fact that we included all mortality and morbidity incidents in our report in contrast to the inclusion of only deaths in their report.
In contrast, 65% of cases were not anticipated, which is considered a relatively high rate. If we accept the following algorithm for analyzing the ability to anticipate adverse outcome we could simply identify problems behind this anticipation defect [Figure 2].
Communication errors are characterized by being easily avoidable. In our report it comprises 13% of factors contributing to incidents. This reflects the need for better learning and practice of communication skills. If we combined this result with a 20% defect in preoperative management as discussed before, keeping in mind that 68% of our cases were scheduled cases, we can conclude that there is a dearth of case discussion of elective procedures or that we need to improve our preoperative communication skills (either interanesthetist or anesthetist-surgeon).
The relatively high percentage of system-related defects (8%), which is usually negligible in other audits, may reflect the need for tighter systems to control our anesthesia practice. Ironically, we believe that this rate is underestimated because of the difficulty we faced in identifying the system itself while diagnosing system errors. Nevertheless, audits from other developing countries are in agreement with ours in the suggestion that the overall contribution of the human factor may be much smaller than often cited and the contribution of system-related factors is higher [16].
| Conclusion | | |
Our first attempt at reviewing our anesthesia practice concluded that we need clearer and tighter systems. Our communication skills need to be improved. Our preoperative assessment and management need to be more effective for better planning of anesthetic procedures. Moreover, we should direct more attention toward learning more about crisis management. Finally, this work is the first step to running our own cycle of service improvement.
| Acknowledgements | | |
Conflicts of interest
None declared.
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[Figure 1], [Figure 2]
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