Outcomes After Nonobstetric Surgery in Pregnant Patients

Medical and Surgical Illnesses During Pregnancy: Perspectives on Immediate and Long-term Outcomes

“…Huang et al's findings 2 stand in sharp contrast to a 2015 study utilizing the American College of Surgeons (ACS) National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database, 8 which was of similar experimental design. Moore and et al 8 propensity-matched 2539 pregnant women to 2539 non-pregnant women (1:1 ratio) between 2006 and 2011 based on 63 preoperative characteristics.…”

“…Lien-Jen et al 1 report that the combination of HDP and GDM may confer additional risk for the development of future hypertension and diabetes mellitus (DM) over and above the risks incurred with each condition alone. In another article, Huang et al 2 report that non-obstetric surgeries in pregnant patients are associated with significant increases in post-operative complications and in-hospital mortality. The results of both studies need to be interpreted in the context of their strengths and limitations, as well as within the framework of the relevant literature in their respective fields.…”

“…In the second article, Huang et al , 2 report that pregnant women undergoing antepartum non-obstetric surgery are at increased risk for perioperative morbidity and mortality. Utilizing data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database, the authors compared 5591 pregnant women to 22,364 non-pregnant women (1:4 ratio) undergoing surgery between 2008 and 2012.…”

“…10 The opposing conclusions of the current study likely relate to differences in methodology and the source of databases between the studies. First, Huang et al's propensity-matching algorithm 2 is less comprehensive than that employed in the Moore et al research. 8 Therefore, the pregnant and non-pregnant patients might have had significant differences in perioperative risks due to confounders that were not accounted for in the matching process.…”

Risk of Postoperative Venous Thromboembolism Among Pregnant Women

“…8,9 Patients with severe complications, especially those who are ventilator dependent, usually require complete bed rest, and immobility is a major cause of postoperative VTE. 11 Additionally, infection and systemic inflammation may increase the risk of VTE through Virchow triad (i.e., stasis of z Missing frequency was 2%, 27%, and 31% for hematocrit, bilirubin, and serum albumin.…”