New Program Results in Shorter Hospital Stays, Reduces Post-Surgery Delirium in Older Adults

Research presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2020 detailed the beta-test of a program for older adults who received major surgery, which led to shorter hospital stays and less post-surgical delirium, reports News-Medical . The ACS Geriatric Surgery Verification program was assessed at the Aging Veterans Surgical Wellness (AVSW) program at the Rocky Mountain Regional Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Aurora, Colo. Enrolled in the study were 186 patients, 158 of whom were matched according to age and type of procedure to a control group of 308 individuals from the national Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program (VASQIP) database. "When we looked at the matched cohort from the VASQIP database, we found a decreased hospital length of stay of four days compared to five days, which is very significant," said the University of Colorado School of Medicine's Alexandra Kovar. "When we compared our outcomes to those reported in previously published research, two important postoperative outcomes in our patient population showed significant improvement: development of postoperative delirium and functional health postoperatively." The rate of post-surgical delirium in the AVSW cohort was 9.3 percent versus 12.1 percent reported in the ACS National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Geriatric Surgery Pilot study — and just 19.1 percent of the AVSW patients reported post-surgical functional cognitive decline compared with 42.9 percent in the pilot study. According to Kovar, "the implementation of the preoperative multidisciplinary conference where we talk about the patients prior to having surgery" were critical to the AVSW program's success.