Brandon Wick
Summer Research Description: As US healthcare expenditures continue to rise, avenues to reduce costs must be explored. Studies have estimated that over 70% of routine labs may be unnecessary, adding over $250 per patient per day in hospitals. For orthopaedic trauma patients, very little data exists in the utility of pre-operative labs in predicting post-operative adverse events. In this study, we used the large, multicenter, prospective American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database consisting of 361,402 patients from 2005-2013 to determine whether pre-operative labs significantly predict post-operative cardiac and septic complications in orthopaedic trauma and hip fracture patients. Of these, 56,336 (15.6%) patients were identified as orthopaedic trauma and 27,441 patients (7.6%) were identified with hip fractures. Pre-operative labs included sodium (normal: 135-145 mEq/L), BUN (normal: 7-20 mg/dL), creatinine (normal: 0.5-1.2 mg/dL), albumin (3.4-5.4 g/dL), bilirubin (normal: 0.3-1.9 mg/dL), SGOT (10-34 IU/L), alkaline phosphatase (44-147 IU/L), white count (4.5-10k/mcL), hematocrit (38-54%), platelet count (150-400k/mcL), prothrombin time (11-13.5 seconds), INR (0.8-1.1), and partial thromboplastin time (25-35 seconds).