Comparison of different risk-adjustment models in assessing short-term surgical outcome after transthoracic esophagectomy in patients with esophageal cancer

BACKGROUND: Different risk-prediction models have been developed, but none is generally accepted in selecting patients for esophagectomy. This study evaluated 5 most frequently used risk-prediction models, including the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Portsmouth-modified Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the enUmeration of Mortality and morbidity (P-POSSUM), and the adjusted version for Oesophagogastric surgery (O-POSSUM), Charlson and the Age adjusted Charlson score to assess postoperative mortality after transthoracic esophagectomy. METHODS: Data were obtained from 278 consecutive esophageal cancer patients between 1991 and 2007. Performance in predicting postoperative mortality (in-hospital and 90-day mortality) were analyzed regarding calibration (Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test) and discrimination (area under the receiver operator curve). RESULTS: The Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test was applied to each model and showed a significant outcome for only the P-POSSUM score (P = .035). The receiver operator curve indicated discriminatory power for P-POSSUM (.766) and for O-POSSUM (.756), other models did not exceed the minimal surface of .7. CONCLUSIONS: Postoperative mortality after esophagectomy was best predicted by O-POSSUM. However, it still overpredicted postoperative mortality. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved