Little is known about treatment expectations of patients with spinal metastases undergoing radiotherapy and/or surgery. Assuming that patients with spinal metastases share characteristics with ...patients who had spinal surgery for non-cancer related conditions and with advanced cancer patients, we performed a systematic review to summarize the literature on patient expectations regarding treatment outcomes of spinal surgery and advanced cancer care.
A comprehensive search was performed in MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsycINFO for studies between 2000 and sep-2019. Studies including adult patients (> 18 years), undergoing spinal surgery or receiving advanced cancer care, investigating patients' pre-treatment expectations regarding treatment outcomes were included. Two independent reviewers screened titles, abstracts and full-texts, extracted data and assessed methodological quality.
The search identified 7343 articles, of which 92 were selected for full-text review. For this review, 31 articles were included. Patients undergoing spinal surgery had overly optimistic expectations regarding pain and symptom relief, they underestimated the probability of functional disability, and overestimated the probability of (complete) recovery and return to work. Studies highlighted that patients feel not adequately prepared for surgery in terms of post-treatment expectations. Similarly, advanced cancer patients receiving palliative treatment often had overly optimistic expectations regarding their survival probability and cure rates.
Patients tend to have overly optimistic expectations regarding pain and symptom relief, recovery and prognosis following spinal surgery or advanced cancer care. Pretreatment consultation about the expected pain and symptom relief, recovery and prognosis may improve understanding of prognosis, and promote and manage expectations, which, in turn, may lead to better perceived outcomes.
PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020145151 .
Surgical site infections (SSIs) of the spine are morbid and costly complications. An accurate surveillance system is required to properly describe the disease burden and the impact of interventions ...that mitigate SSI risk. Unfortunately, uniform approaches to conducting SSI surveillance are lacking because of varying SSI case definitions, the lack of a perfect reference case definition and heterogeneous data sources.
To assess the accuracy of four independent data sources that capture SSIs after spine surgery, with estimation of a measurement-error-adjusted SSI incidence.
A Bayesian latent class model assessed the sensitivity/specificity of each data source to identify SSI and to estimate a measurement-error-adjusted incidence. The four data sources used were: the discharge abstract database (DAD), the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database, the Infection Prevention and Control Canada (IPAC) database, and the Spine Adverse Events Severity database.
A total of 904 patients underwent spine surgery in 2017. The most sensitive data source was DAD (0.799; 95% credible interval (CrI): 0.597–0.943); the least sensitive was NSQIP (0.497; 95% CrI: 0.308–0.694). The most specific data source was IPAC (0.997; 95% CrI: 0.993–1.000) and the least specific was DAD (0.969; 95% CrI: 0.956–0.981). The measurement-error-adjusted SSI incidence was 0.030 (95% CrI: 0.019–0.045). The crude incidence using the DAD overestimated the incidence, and the three other data sources underestimated it.
SSI surveillance in the spine surgery population is feasible using several data sources, provided that measurement error is considered.
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