Preoperative risk stratification in patients undergoing elective infrarenal aortic aneurysm surgery: Evaluation of five risk scoring methods

Objective. To evaluate five risk scoring methods in predicting the immediate postoperative outcome after elective open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). Design. Retrospective evaluation of the Eagle score, Glasgow aneurysm score, Leiden score, modified Leiden score and Vanzetto score in a consecutive series of patients. Patients. Two hundred and eighty-six consecutive patients undergoing elective infrarenal aortic aneurysm repair. Results. Nine patients (3.1%) died in hospital and another 35 (12%) experienced severe postoperative complications. For the Glasgow aneurysm score, Leiden score, modified Leiden score and Vanzetto score receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis for prediction of in-hospital mortality showed area under the curve (AUC) of 0.749 (p = 0.01), 0.777 (p = 0.008), 0.788 (p = 0.006) and 0.794 (p = 0.005), respectively. The Eagle risk score was less accurate for predicting in-hospital mortality. The risk-scoring systems did not perform well in predicting post-operative complications, but multivariate analysis showed that the modified Leiden score was an independent predictor of postoperative complications. Conclusion. All scoring systems predict, with reasonable accuracy, the risk of in-hospital death in patients undergoing elective open repair of AAA, whereas the accuracy in predicting severe postoperative complications is less.