RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Surgical patients should be provided adequate information on operation. The information on mortality is extremely important among them. The purposes of this study are to investigate the recent mortality associated with anesthesia and surgery, and to get a logistic regression model of mortality based on patient information. METHODS: We collected all of the anesthetic cases except local anesthesia during 5 years (between 2000 and 2004) in a hospital. All deaths within 7 days after anesthesia were retrieved. These data were analyzed in terms of age, gender, department in charge, time point after anesthesia, elective or emergency surgery, type of anesthesia, operation name, and diagnosis. The combined effects of the variables on the mortality were evaluated with logistic regression. The causes of death were also analyzed. RESULTS: There were 155 deaths among 74,458 patients under anesthesia. Age less than 1 year old or greater than 80 years old, male gender, department of thoracic surgery, emergency operation, cardiovascular surgery, and diseases for transplantation had higher mortality than their counterparts. Regression model was followed with assignment of '1' for the above mentioned categories. Other categories were designated by '0'. Log[p (death)/{1-p (death)}] = -9.15+1.03xage+0.66xsex+0.79xdepartment+2.77xemergency+2.52 xdiagnosis+0.89xoperation The leading cause of death was sepsis (21.9%). CONCLUSIONS: The average of mortality within 7 days after anesthesia was 21 per 10,000 anesthetic cases (0.21%). Estimated mortality based on logistic regression ranged from 0.01% to 10.25% depending on patient information.