Patient-reported performance status and postoperative complications in elective colorectal cancer surgery

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the concordance between patient-reported performance status (prPS) and surgeon-reported performance status (srPS), and to assess the correlation between srPS and prPS and postoperative complications following elective colorectal cancer surgery. Not all patients are deemed suitable for undergoing a surgical procedure. We aimed to assess whether prPS can aid the surgeons’ decision-making prior to surgery.

In this retrospective study, 524 patients undergoing colorectal cancer surgery were included. prPS were collected via questionnaires, while 30-day postoperative complications were obtained from the Danish Colorectal Cancer Group (DCCG) database. To evaluate the agreement between prPS and srPS, linearly weighted kappa statistics were applied. Rank-biserial correlation analysis was used to calculate the correlation between prPS and srPS with postoperative complications.

In total, there was an approximate 71% concordance between the assessments. Around 17% of the patients rated themselves with a higher PS status than the surgeons, while 13% of the patients rated themselves with a lower PS. Overall postoperative complications, minor surgical complications, and medical complications were all significantly correlated to both srPS and prPS, while only srPS was correlated with major surgical complications. Neither srPS nor prPS were correlated with overall surgical complications (major and minor collapsed).

The agreement between prPS and srPS is poor and in nearly one-third of the cases, disagreement occurs. Overall, both prPS and srPS were correlated to postoperative complications, with srPS demonstrated a slightly higher correlation.