What determines a successful operation? A number of things can be considered with what determines a successful operation. Patient satisfaction, return to sport, return to work and functional outcomes are all interconnected and good gauges of surgical success.
Functional Outcomes
There are several objective and subjective measures of how function can improve after surgery. Objective measures can sometimes be difficult to standardize and attempts are made with patient surveys to help lend insight into many surgical operations. This can come with a variety of surveys that can measure how patient’s report their current function at different time points after surgery.
Seen in the image above, this compares Dr. Marshall’s knee arthroscopy procedures (ACL reconstruction, meniscus surgery, etc) over different time points after surgery. The far left numbers represent a pain scale from 0-10 with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain and the numbers at the bottom being time prior to and after surgery. The blue line represents Dr. Marshall’s previous patient outcomes and the green line represents the national average for sports surgeons across the country.
This next image shows similar data as before, but representing shoulder arthroscopy surgeries (rotator cuff repair, labral repair, etc). This shows Dr. Marshall’s previous shoulder surgery patients in the blue line compared with the national average for sports surgeons across the country in the green line.
Surgical outcomes are important measures to continue to allow surgeons to maximize surgical techniques and treatments to continue to improve the patient experience for surgery and maximize the benefit of surgery.