New score for prediction of morbidity in patients undergoing open pancreaticoduodenectomy

Objective The Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the enUmeration of Mortality and morbidity (POSSUM) is commonly used to predict the risk of postoperative complications in general surgery. However, use of the POSSUM is not absolutely suitable for open pancreaticoduodenectomy (OPD), which has unique complications such as pancreatic fistula formation. This study was performed to establish a new risk score for assessing the incidence of postoperative complications of OPD. Methods This retrospective case-control study involved 159 patients who underwent standard OPD from 2 January 2017 to 1 February 2019. The risk factors for post-OPD complications were statistically investigated, and a risk score model was established by multivariate logistic regression. Results Among all 159 patients, 72 (42.28%) developed complications. A scoring system was developed based on the following five independent variables: sodium concentration of <141.20 mmol/L, white blood cell count of >6.35 x 10(9)/L, pancreatic texture grade, body mass index of >25.06 kg/m(2), and basic respiratory diseases. Our risk score model demonstrated better discriminating power, prediction power, and prediction probability than the POSSUM model in the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Conclusion This novel risk score may help to predict postoperative complications after OPD with higher accuracy than the POSSUM system.