Before performing a laparoscopic colectomy, Harry Papaconstantinou, MD, FACS, entered his patient’s risk factors into the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Surgical Risk Calculator. The patient, an 80-year-old gentleman with a 7-cm tumor growing in his colon, had multiple issues that made surgery more complicated—diabetes, hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was also obese and a smoker. The ACS calculator put his surgical site infection (SSI)
OCTOBER 6, 2016