Risk Prediction in Surgery

Introduction

The purpose of these pages is to provide surgeons with the ability to calculate a P-POSSUM score for their general surgical patients online to enable them to provide further information on risk in terms of morbidity and mortality. There is also a wealth of general information on risk prediction in surgery - this area of the site is constantly being updated and it is worth checking back on a regular basis. The service described above is provided free of charge with no liability attached (see disclaimer). A purpose written visual basic program for individual PC usage can be supplied at a small charge by contacting the webmaster.

Calculate a P-POSSUM Score

Choose a value in each category that matches your patient from the drop down lists in both the physiological and operative parameters tables below. Default values (the lowest score) are shown for each category. Simply submitting the form as it is without changing the values (i.e. a young fit patient having a minor operation) still gives a % risk for morbidity and mortality. This illustrates that even in the modified P-POSSUM formula used in this application still overestimates risk in low risk groups. The more 'risky' the procedure the more accurate is the predicted risk calculated below.

Questions? - contact the Webmaster

If calculating risk in a preoperative patient you will need to estimate the parameters below. You can return and modify the parameters post-operatively if required.