Assessing surgical risk calculators on hernia repair candidates with cirrhosis.

PURPOSE: Several risk calculators have been developed and deployed to help surgeons estimate the mortality risk that comes with performing hernia repair surgery on patient with severe liver disease. This study seeks to evaluate the accuracy of these risk calculators on patients with cirrhosis and identify the most suitable population of patient to use these calculators on.

METHODS

The American College of Surgeons National Surgery Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) 2013-2021 datasets were queried for patients who underwent hernia repair surgery. Mayo Clinic's "Post-operative Mortality Risk in Patients with Cirrhosis" risk calculator, Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) calculator, NSQIP's Surgical Risk Calculator, and a surgical 5-item modified frailty index were assessed to determine whether they accurately predict mortality following abdominal hernia repair.

RESULTS

In total, 1368 patients met inclusion criteria. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis of the 4 mortality risk calculators resulted in the following: NSQIP Surgical Risk Calculator = 0.803 (p < 0.001); "Post-operative Mortality Risk in Patients with Cirrhosis" with an etiology of "Alcoholic or Cholestatic" yielded an AUC = 0.722 (p < 0.001); MELD score yielded an AUC = 0.709 (p < 0.001); and the modified 5-item frailty index yielded an AUC = 0.583 (p = 0.04).

CONCLUSION

The NSQIP Surgical Risk Calculator more accurately predicts 30-day mortality in patients with ascites undergoing hernia repair. However, if the patient is missing one of the 21 input variables required by this calculator, Mayo Clinic's 30-day mortality calculator should be consulted before the more widely used MELD score.