Is the SORT score reliable in predicting postoperative 30-day mortality after a nonemergency surgery in Saudi population?

CONTEXT: The process of stratifying patient risk preoperatively helps in the decision about the best-possible postoperative care for patients. There have been many scoring systems that are used in anesthesia practice. AIMS: To find out whether there is any difference between the mortality predicted from SORT scoring and the observed mortality among Saudi patients. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: This was a prospective, observational study in which we included patients underoing nonemergency surgical procedures at the Security Forces Hospital, Riyadh. METHODS AND MATERIAL: We calculated the SORT scores for all the included patients. We then collected the 30-day mortality data of all the patients having nonemergency surgical procedures. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: We calculated the expected mortality ratio. A P value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: The mean SORT mortality risk score (%) for the whole sample was 0.30. The expected number of deaths was 1.638 while the observed deaths were 2, which yields an O/E ratio of 0.819 (p-value: 0.006). The O/E mortality ratios for patients in each individual ASA class were found to be statistically insignificant which means that SORT score can reliably predict mortality for each ASA class. CONCLUSIONS: SORT scores can be used to predict 30-day mortality after nonemergency surgeries in Saudi population.