Center for Surgery and Public Health

January 2009

In the News

This month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a global multi-center study showing a more than one-third reduction in complications and deaths in hospitals ranging from rural Tanzania to Seattle. This work led by Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, and several members of the center, including surgical research fellow Alex Haynes, MD, MPH, was reported by a number of outlets last week including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Times, USA Today, The Telegraph, The Independent, and major television and radio networks here and abroad.

• Members of the team, including Thomas Weiser, MD, MPH, Angela Bader, MD, MPH and Lizzie Edmondson were in London this past week for a WHO Europe conference announcing the WHO Safe Surgery checklist findings and the start of campaign to introduce the checklist into routine use in all hospitals in the United Kingdom. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, MA, simultaneously launched a campaign to bring 4,000 US hospitals to introduce the checklist in at least one operating room within three months. Read about it in The Boston Globe.

CSPH Recent Publications

• Louis Nguyen, MD, MBA, MPH, Selwyn Rogers, MD, MPH, and Stuart Lipsitz, PhD, published a study entitled “Disparity in Outcomes of Surgical Revascularization for Limb Salvage. Race and Gender are Synergistic Determinants of Vein Graft Failure and Limb Loss” in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
  
  
• Margarita Ramos, MD, MPH, Zain Khalpey, MD, PhD, Stuart Lipsitz, PhD, Jill Steinberg, RN, MPH, Tess Panizales, RN, MSN, Michael Zinner, MD, PhD, and Selwyn O. Rogers, MD, MPH published an article in Annals of Surgery entitled “Relationship of Perioperative Hyperglycemia and Postoperative Infections in Patients Who Undergo General and Vascular Surgery”.
  
  
• Scott Regenbogen, MD, Stuart Lipsitz, ScD, Caprice Greenberg, MD, MPH, and Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, had their article, “Utility of the Surgical Apgar Score: Validation in 4,119 Patients” published in Archives of Surgery this month.

Grants and Awards

• Caprice Greenberg, MD, MPH, received a CRICO/RMF grant of $100,000 to fund her “Using Video for a Prospective Analysis of Surgical Safety” study.
  
  
• The ACS congratulated the Brigham and Women’s Hospital for demonstrating exemplary outcomes in two or more of the following SCIP/HAC related performance measures in DVT, Cardiac, Respiratory, SSI, and UTI.

Presentations and Upcoming Meetings

Two abstracts have been selected for presentation at the American Surgical Association’s 129th Annual Meeting to be held April 23-25 in Indian Wells, California.

• “The Better Colectomy Project: Association of the Best-Practice Adherence Rates to Outcomes in Colorectal Surgery.” Authors of the paper include: Alex Arriaga, MD; Robert Lancaster, MD, MPH; William Berry, MD, MPH; Scott Regenbogen, MD, MPH; Stuart Lipsitz, ScD; Haytham Kaafarani, MA, MD, MPH; Andrew Elbardissi, MD, MPH; Priya Desai, BA; Stephen Ferzoco, MD; Ronald Bleday, MD; Elizabeth Breen, MD; William Kastrinakis, MD; Marc Rubin, MD; and Atul Gawande, MD, MPH.
  
  
• Scott Regenbogen, MD, MPH, Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, Stuart Lipsitz, ScD, Caprice Greenberg, MD, MPH, and Ashish Jha were also invited to present their paper entitled, “Do Difference in Hospital and Surgeon Quality Explain Racial Disparities in Lower-Extremity Vascular Amputation?”