NHS Lothian

Vascular Anaesthesia Society of Great Britain and Ireland NHS Lothian

DL-2022-014

Edinburgh is a regional and national referral centre for patients with disease of the aorta, the main blood vessel carrying blood away from the heart. Patients being considered for surgery on the aorta undergo thorough assessment, because these operations come with significant risk. This project will use data collected routinely during these assessments and later clinical care to understand the complications faced by patients undergoing operations on the aorta. It will use the data collected during assessment for surgery to better understand the individual risk posed to patients. This information will allow healthcare professionals to make better decisions in planning patient care, and to better inform patients of the individual risks they face undergoing these complex operations.

The findings of this overall project will benefit the public through providing clinical audit and service evaluation of these specialist vascular services. These data will support the service in governance and quality improvement aims. The findings from this specific piece of work will support understanding of recording practices and relevance within the vascular team. If it is found that certain locally recorded morbidity outcomes are more accurate than provided by national data linkage, we can look to design quality improvement work to improve coding accuracy. If it is found that national data linkage provides more accurate morbidity and mortality outcomes it will have two benefits. Firstly, more efficient use of vascular specialist nurse time as those outcomes will not need to be counted by two separate mechanisms (local and national data linkage). Secondly, it will provide evidence to support an application to begin a prospective cohort of patients being assessed for and undergoing major aortic surgery as a means of ongoing service evaluation and management.

Efficacy & Mechanism Evaluation

13/09/2023

Personally Identifiable

Release