Comorbidity assessment methods and their significance in predicting the results of treatment of older patients undergoing elective abdominal surgeries for cancer – A scoping review

Introduction

The scoping review was performed to identify methods of comorbidity assessment and to evaluate their significance in predicting the results of treatment of older patients undergoing elective abdominal surgeries for cancer.

Materials and methods

Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL, Web of Science, ClinicalTrials.gov and European Trials Register were searched for eligible studies investigating the impact of comorbidity on various postoperative outcomes of patients aged ≥65. Findings were narratively reported.

Results

The review identified 40 studies with a total population of 59,612 patients, using eight different methods of comorbidity assessment. The most used was Charlson Comorbidity Index (60 % of studies) and presence of specific comorbid conditions (38 %). No study provided rationale for the choice of specific comorbidity measure. Most of the included studies reported short-term results (75 %), such as postoperative complications (43 %) and mortality (18 %) as main clinical endpoint. The results were inconsistent across the studies.

Discussion

There is still no consensus regarding the choice of comorbidity measures and their role in postoperative outcome prediction. Further efforts are needed to develop new, well-designed, more effective comorbidity assessments tools.