Major incidents and complications in otherwise healthy patients undergoing elective procedures: results based on 1.37 million anaesthetic procedures

Background Improved anaesthesia safety has made severe anaesthesia-related incidents, complications, and deaths rare events, but concern about morbidity and mortality in anaesthesia continues. This study examines possible severe adverse outcomes or death recorded in a large national surveillance system based on a core data set (CDS). Methods Cases from 1999 to 2010 were filtered from the CDS database. Cases were defined as elective patients classified as ASA physical status grades I and II (without relevant risk factors) resulting in death or serious complication. Four experts reviewed the cases to determine anaesthetic involvement. Results Of 1 374 678 otherwise healthy, ASA I and II patients in the CDS database, 36 met the study inclusion criteria resulting in a death or serious complication rate of 26.2 per million [95% confidence interval (CI), 19.4–34.6] procedures, and for those with possible direct anaesthetic involvement, 7.3 per million cases (95% CI, 3.9–12.3). Conclusions This is the first study assessing severe incidents and complications from a national outcome-tracking database. Annual identification and review of cases, perhaps with standardized database queries in the respective departments, might provide more detailed information about the cascades that lead to unfortunate outcomes.