Role of a digital tool in preoperative lung resection surgery assessment

The assessment of patients likely to undergo lung resection surgery is a multidisciplinary approach involving pulmonologists, surgeons and anaesthesiologists. In thoracic surgery, medical operability is also a calculation of postoperative lung function. A mobile application – PreParAPP MSD – to calculate postoperative lung function has been developed with the endorsement of the Italian Society of Anaesthesia, Analgesia and Intensive Care and with the unconditional support of MSD Italia. Thanks to a simple graphic interface, the calculation becomes fast and intuitive, while the possibility of storing and sharing data in an analytical and computerised way with other clinicians might help with the full assessment of patients without forcing them to undergo several medical examinations. These simple calculated parameters are performed by a minority of clinicians, generally anaesthesiologists. In our facility, there is a team involved in the perioperative evaluation of lung resection surgery (13 pulmonologists, 9 surgeons and 5 anaesthesiologists). In order to evaluate the possible Awareness towards postoperative lung function calculation better, we organised an internal survey with 27 clinicians who are members of such a team before and after the introduction of the PreParAPP MSD. It was found that after the introduction of PreParAPP MSD, the percentage of clinicians involved in postoperative lung function calculation rose from 18% to 70%. The implementation of a digital tool may help to improve guideline adherence, in accordance with other experiences in which such tools represented the start for various quality improvement purposes throughout the medical field.