Nomograms for morbidity and mortality after oncologic colon resection in the enhanced recovery era: results from a multicentric prospective national study

Purpose: Predicting postoperative complications and mortality is important to plan the surgical strategy. Different scores have been proposed before to predict them but none of them have been yet implemented into the routine clinical practice because their difficulties and low accuracy with new surgical strategies and enhanced recovery. The main aim of this study is to identify risk factors for postoperative morbidity and mortality after colonic resection (CR) without protective stomas, in order to develop a comprehensive, up-to-date, simple, reliable, and applicable model for the preoperative assessment of patients with colon cancer. Methods: Multivariable analysis was performed to identify risk factors for 60-day morbidity and mortality. Coefficients derived from the regression model were used in the nomograms to predict morbidity and mortality. Results: Three thousand one hundred ninety-three patients from 52 hospitals were included into the analysis. Sixty-day postoperative complications rate was 28.3% and the mortality rate was 3%. In multivariable analysis the independent risk factors for postoperative complications were age, male gender, liver and pulmonary diseases, obesity, preoperative albumin, anticoagulant treatment, open surgery, intraoperative complications, and urgent surgery. Independent risk factors for mortality were age, preoperative albumin anticoagulant treatment, and intraoperative complications. Conclusions: Risk factors for morbidity and mortality after CR for cancer were identified and two easy predictive tools were developed. Both of them could provide important information for preoperative consultation and surgical planning in the time of enhance recovery.