Multicenter, Prospective Cohort Study of Oesophageal Injuries and Related Clinical Outcomes (MUSOIC study).

Abstract

Objective: to identify prognostic factors associated with 90-day mortality in patients with oesophageal perforation (OP), and characterize the specific timeline from presentation to intervention, and its relation to mortality.

Background: OP is a rare gastro-intestinal surgical emergency with a high mortality rate. However, there is no updated evidence on its outcomes in the context of centralized esophago-gastric services; updated consensus guidelines; and novel non-surgical treatment strategies.

Methods: a multi-center, prospective cohort study involving eight high-volume esophago-gastric centers (January 2016 to December 2020) was undertaken. The primary outcome measure was 90-day mortality. Secondary measures included length of hospital and ICU stay, and complications requiring re-intervention or re-admission. Mortality model training was performed using random forest, support-vector machines, and logistic regression with and without elastic net regularisation. Chronological analysis was performed by examining each patient's journey timepoint with reference to symptom onset.

Results: the mortality rate for 369 patients included was 18.9%. Patients treated conservatively, endoscopically, surgically, or combined approaches had mortality rates of 24.1%, 23.7%, 8.7%, and 18.2%, respectively. The predictive variables for mortality were Charlson comorbidity index, haemoglobin count, leucocyte count, creatinine levels, cause of perforation, presence of cancer, hospital transfer, CT findings, whether a contrast swallow was performed, and intervention type. Stepwise interval model showed that time to diagnosis was the most significant contributor to mortality.

Conclusions: non-surgical strategies have better outcomes and may be preferred in selected cohorts to manage perforations. Outcomes can be significantly improved through better risk-stratification based on afore-mentioned modifiable risk factors.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Tim J. Underwood: orcid.org/0000-0001-9455-2188

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