Opinion Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2020; 26(21): 2682-2690
Published online Jun 7, 2020. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v26.i21.2682
Cost of postoperative complications: How to avoid calculation errors
Roberto De la Plaza Llamas, José M Ramia
Roberto De la Plaza Llamas, José M Ramia, Department of General and Digestive Surgery, Hospital Universitario de Guadalajara, Guadalajara 19002, Spain
Author contributions: De la Plaza Llamas R and Ramia JM conceived the study and drafted the manuscript; De la Plaza Llamas R design the study and performed the research; Both authors approved the final version of the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Roberto De la Plaza Llamas, FACS, MD, MSc, PhD, Associate Professor, Doctor, Surgeon, Department of General and Digestive Surgery, Hospital Universitario de Guadalajara, Calle Donante de Sangre s/n, Guadalajara 19002, Spain. rdplazal@sescam.jccm.es
Received: December 27, 2019
Peer-review started: December 27, 2019
First decision: March 27, 2020
Revised: March 27, 2020
Accepted: May 20, 2020
Article in press: May 20, 2020
Published online: June 7, 2020
Processing time: 161 Days and 21.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: No surgery service in the world registers and/or audits the postoperative complications (PC) of all the surgical procedures it performs. Most economic studies of PC are of poor quality; without an accurate registration of PC, their costs cannot be reliably determined. The article describes ways of quantifying and classifying PC, discusses the perspectives from which their economic evaluation and monitoring can be approached, and makes recommendations. An accurate assessment of PC and their costs will allow us to determine which areas need investment in order to lower the incidence of PC, improve surgical results, and reduce economic costs.