Table 6 summarizes the operative efficiency indicators and fair economic values of the diagnostic paths followed by patients aged ≥50 or <50 years (the latter is an age-group usually excluded by official screening campaigns) presenting malignant or benign breast lesions at postsurgery histology.
Other indicators of quality have been suggested in colorectal surgery, including structural indicators such as operative caseload and process indicators such as abdominoperineal excision rate for rectal cancer, quality of mesorectal excision and circumferential resection margin positivity rate, lymph node yield, and preoperative use of neoadjuvant therapy.
Day of surgery cancellations are a widely used indicator for operative effectiveness, but there is a lack of knowledge concerning the effects of cancellations during earlier stages of a patient's preoperative waiting period.
Applications may include assessment of PA in laminitis, obese individuals and geriatrics, or in post-operative horses as an indicator of pain.
Operative efficiency is a specific indicator used to assess the capability of a diagnostic path to identify the pathology.
Although quality of life and patient experience measures are vital dimensions of quality, they are difficult to measure and so post-operative visual acuity (VA) is considered an informative indicator on surgical quality.
In our opinion, overall survival, adjusted for differences in tumor stages, should be the most important performance indicator in surgical oncology, being even more valuable than operative mortality.
Furthermore, the rate of hypertrophy (not just the degree) may also be an important indicator of pre-operative readiness [20].
ASA grade as a comorbidity index is validated in hip fracture surgery [16] and it is a useful indicator of peri-operative patient health status [17].
In view of the fact that heart rate increased above 25% of pre-operative values (TC) in animals undergoing surgery (GC and GCA) at T4 and T6, overall changes in heart rate above 25% were considered relevant as an indicator of post-operative pain and were therefore included.
