Effective prediction of postoperative complications for patients after open hepatectomy: a simplified scoring system based on perioperative parameters

BACKGROUND: The aim of the study was to develop a scoring system for the prediction of postoperative complications of open hepatectomy. METHOD: All consecutive patients receiving open hepatectomy from 2015 to 2017 were included in the study. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to confirm the risk factors for postoperative complications. Afterwards, a novel scoring system was developed to predict the postoperative complications. RESULTS: The study included a total of 207 patients. For the test dataset, multivariate analysis indicated that diabetes, scale of surgery, serum potassium, and blood loss versus body weight were independent risk factors of the postoperative complications. The area under the curve (AUC) of the novel scoring system we proposed for prediction of postoperative complications of hepatectomy was 0.803, which is comparable with the AUCs of previous scoring systems. Furthermore, in the validation dataset, the corresponding AUC of the new scoring system was 0.717. CONCLUSION: This novel and simplified scoring system can effectively predict the postoperative complications of open hepatectomy and could help identify patients who are at high risk of postoperative complications. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12893-019-0597-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.