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Although it is already reasonably accurate, the American College of Surgeons recently announced plans to recalibrate their popular Surgical Risk Calculator later this year. The online tool, which was created in 2013 to help calculate a patient’s risk of developing post-op complications, currently attracts about 1500 hits per day.
A recent study tested the accuracy of the calculator by comparing the tool’s predictions with actual outcomes. Researchers studied 2.7 million surgical records from 586 hospitals and then made tweaks to the calculator’s formulas to see if they could improve the tool’s accuracy. They found that while the tool was already mostly accurate, it tended to overestimate risk for low and high-risk patients and underestimate if for patients with moderate risk.
Researchers say recalibrating the formula appeared to solve those issues. As soon as later this year or early 2017, they expect to update the online calculator.
"Our study demonstrates that the Surgical Risk Calculator has excellent calibration," says Mark E. Cohen, PhD, statistical manager in the ACS Division of Research and Optimal Patient Care and co-developer of the calculator. "Although no such tool can provide perfect predictions, the calculator does what it is intended to do — accurately estimate a patient's probabilities for important adverse events postoperatively."
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