The impact of surgeon volume on patient outcome in spine surgery: a systematic review.

PURPOSE: Recently, strategies aimed at optimizing provider factors have been proposed, including regionalization of surgeries to higher volume centers and adoption of volume standards. With limited literature promoting the regionalization of spine surgeries, we undertook a systematic review to investigate the impact of surgeon volume on outcomes in patients undergoing spine surgery. METHODS: We performed a systematic review examining the association between surgeon volume and spine surgery outcomes. To be included in the review, the study population had to include patients undergoing a primary or revision spinal procedure. These included anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF), anterior/posterior cervical fusion, laminectomy/decompression, anterior/posterior lumbar decompression with fusion, discectomy, and spinal deformity surgery (spine arthrodesis). RESULTS: Studies were variable in defining surgeon volume thresholds. Higher surgeon volume was associated with a significantly lower risk of postoperative complications, a lower length of stay (LOS), lower cost of hospital stay and a lower risk of readmissions and reoperations/revisions. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest a trend towards better outcomes for higher volume surgeons; however, further study needs to be carried out to define objective volume thresholds for individual spine surgeries for surgeons to use as a marker of proficiency.

Knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding infection control measures among medical students.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the knowledge, attitude and reported practices of medical students regarding infection control measures. METHODS: The cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study was conducted at one public and one private medical university in Karachi from January to February 2016. The students enrolled were in their clinical years of the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery course and their knowledge, attitude and practice were measured regarding infection control measures. SPSS 19 was used to analyse data. RESULTS: There were 413 medical students with a mean age of 21.78±1.10 years. Overall, 206(49.9%) students were from the private university and 207(50.1%) from the public institution. Students from the private institution had better knowledge compared to those from the public institution regarding hand hygiene (p<0.001), needlestick injuries (p<0.001) and surgical scrubbing (p=0.007), as well as better reported practices regarding hand hygiene (p<0.001) and surgical scrubbing (p=0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge and practices of medical students regarding the method of surgical scrubbing and needlestick injury protocols in particular needed improvement.

The impact of surgeon volume and hospital volume on postoperative mortality and morbidity after hip fractures: A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: Recently, strategies aimed at optimizing provider factors have been proposed, including regionalization of surgeries to higher volume centers, and adoption of volume standards. With limited literature investigating the impact of hospital and surgeon volume on the outcome of hip fracture repairs, we undertook a systematic review to solidify the findings and attempt to arrive at a definitive conclusion with respect to both factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a systematic review examining the association between surgeon and hospital volume and hip fracture outcomes. To be included in the review, the study population had to include patients undergoing any hip fracture repair such as hemiarthroplasty (HA), internal fixation (ORIF) and total hip arthroplasty (THA). A total of five studies investigating surgeon volume and twelve studies investigating hospital volume were included in the study. With the exception of one study investigating both surgeon and hospital volume, volume thresholds were defined for all studies. RESULTS: Studies were variable in defining surgeon and hospital volume thresholds. Low surgeon volume was associated with a longer LOS and a higher risk of mortality, but results were contrasting with respect to postoperative complications. High volume hospitals fared better than low volume with respect to length of stay, postoperative complications and time to surgery. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing hospital volume was a more stronger predictor of postoperative outcomes as compared to surgeon volume. However, there are still few researches with respect to surgeon volume and further studies may yield a more definitive answer to this question.