Surgical team in India calls for mandatory enforcement of WHO safety checklist

A team of gastrointestinal surgeons in India has called for mandatory enforcement of the World Health Organization’s surgical safety checklist across the country, after implementing it in their own department and observing lower postoperative complications and mortality.

The surgeons at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi documented a mortality rate of 10% among patients whose operations followed standard hospital safety protocols, compared with 5.7% among patients managed under the WHO surgical safety checklist.1

Their study is thought to be the first randomised controlled trial on surgical outcomes from a developing country. The 20 month study period covered a variety of gastrointestinal procedures, including bile duct excisions and hepatic resections, duodenal and gastric perforation repairs, small bowel resections and anastomoses, and laparascopic, open, and radical …