Analysis of Postoperative Complications in Spinal Surgery, Hospital Length of Stay, and Unplanned Readmission: Application of Dindo-Clavien Classification to Spine Surgery.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective study. Level of evidence III.

OBJECTIVE

Postoperative complications in spine surgery are associated with increased morbidity, hospital length of stay, and health care costs. Registry of complications in orthopedics and the spine surgery is heterogeneous.

METHODS

Between July 2016 and June 2017, 274 spinal surgeries were performed, the presence of postoperative complications was analyzed at 90 days (according to the classification of Dindo-Clavien, grades I-V), hospital length of stay, surgical complexity (low, medium, and high), unplanned readmission, and risk factors were evaluated.

RESULTS

A total of 79 patients suffered a complication (28.8%), of them 21 (26.7%) were grade I, 24 (30.3%) were grade II, 4 (5.7%) were grade IIIA, and 29 (37.3%) were grade IIIB. There were no IV and V grade cases. The most frequent complication was excessive pain followed by deep wound infection and anemia. Surgical complexity and surgical time were significantly associated with the risk of developing a complication. The average number of hospital length of stay in patients without and with complications were 2.7 and 10.6, respectively, and the unplanned readmission rate was 11%.

CONCLUSIONS

Registry of postoperative complications allows the correct standardization and risk factors required to establish measures to decrease them, the application of Dindo-Clavien classification was useful for the purpose of our study.