Mortality after surgery in Europe

摘要

The Association of Anaesthesiologists and Reanimatologists of Latvia and the Latvian Association of Surgeons would like to state that the mortality data published in the paper by Rupert Pearse and colleagues (Sept 22, p 1O59) were completely incorrect regarding Latvia.During the 7-day cohort study between April 4 and April 11, 2011, there was one death out of 85 patients at the Paul Stradins Clinical University Hospital; one death out of 104 patients at the Riga East Clinical University Hospital "Gailezers"; and no deaths out of 113 patients at the Traumatology-Orthopaedic Hospital in Riga. Therefore, during this period, only two of 302 patients who were enrolled in this study actually died, giving a mortality rate of 0-66%, not 21-5% as published by Pearse and colleagues. The heads of these departments undertook an internal audit and they did not find any errors.The important issue is the fact that Pearse and colleagues' data were not controlled and verified by the Latvian coordinator before publication, despite repeated requests. Such highly unusual and unlikely results were published without further clarification and confirmation from the original source.