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Background: The surgical morbidity and mortality (M&M) conference is a vital part of a resident's surgical education, but methods to collect and store M&M data are often rudimentary and unreliable. The authors propose a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant, electronic health record (EHR)-connected application and database to report and store complication data., Methods: The app is linked to the patient's EHR, and as a result, basic data on each surgical case-including diagnosis, surgery type, and surgeon-are automatically uploaded to the app. In addition, all data are stored in a secure SQL database-with communications between the app and the database end-to-end encrypted for HIPAA compliance. The full surgical team has access to the app, democratizing complications reporting and allowing for reporting in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. This complication information can then be automatically pulled from the app with a premade presentation for the M&M conference. The data can also be accessed by a Power BI dashboard, allowing for easy quality improvement analyses., Results: When implemented, the app improved data collection for the M&M conference while providing a database for institutional quality improvement use. The authors also identified additional utility of the app, including ensuring appropriate revenue capture. The general appearance of the app and the dashboard can be found in the article., Conclusion: The app developed in this project significantly improves on more common methods for M&M conference complication reporting-transforming M&M data into a valuable resource for resident education and quality improvement., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Objectives: Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. The incidence of pancreatic cancer in African Americans is 50% to 90% higher than the incidence in other racial groups. African Americans also have the worst prognosis. This is an evidence-based review of pancreatic cancer in African Americans with particular emphasis on baseline characteristics, treatment, and survival., Methods: We queried PubMed in search for articles describing racial disparities in pancreatic cancer. Two categories of terms were "anded" together: pancreatic cancer terms and race terms. The last search was performed on November 14, 2013., Results: We summarized the data on pancreatic cancer baseline characteristics, treatment, and survival for African Americans that we obtained from the following databases: (1) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results, 1988-2008; (2) California Cancer Registry 1988-1998; (3) Cancer Survivor Program of Orange County/San Diego Imperial Organization for Cancer Control, 1988-1998; and (4) Harris County, 1998-2010., Conclusions: Overall, pancreatic cancer survival of African Americans has not significantly improved over the past several decades despite advances in multimodality therapy; African Americans continue to face worse outcomes than whites. Although baseline characteristics, treatment, and biological factors offer some explanation, they do not completely explain the disparities in incidence and survival.