Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 21, 2016; 22(43): 9544-9553
Published online Nov 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i43.9544
Impact of frailty on approach to colonic resection: Laparoscopy vs open surgery
Catalina Mosquera, Konstantinos Spaniolas, Timothy L Fitzgerald
Catalina Mosquera, Timothy L Fitzgerald, Department of General Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, NC 27834, United States
Konstantinos Spaniolas, Division of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, Greenville, NC 27834, United States
Author contributions: Mosquera C performed the research, data analysis and wrote the paper; Spaniolas K contributed to the analysis, supervised the report and clinical adviser; Fitzgerald TL designed the research and contributed to the analysis as well as paper revisions.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of East Carolina University.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We have no financial relationships to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Timothy L Fitzgerald, MD, Associate Professor, Department of General Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology, East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, 4S24, 600 Moye Boulevard, Greenville, NC 27834, United States. fitzgeraldt@ecu.edu
Telephone: +1-252-7444110 Fax: +1-252-7445777
Received: August 7, 2016
Peer-review started: August 10, 2016
First decision: August 29, 2016
Revised: September 9, 2016
Accepted: October 10, 2016
Article in press: October 10, 2016
Published online: November 21, 2016
Processing time: 103 Days and 12.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The safety of laparoscopic colectomy is well established; however to date little is understood regarding the influence of frailty on postoperative outcomes. The purpose of our study was to determine the safety of laparoscopic surgery for patient undergoing colonic resection through the frailty spectrum compared to open intervention. After analyzing a total of 94811 patients undergoing colectomy, and classifying them by their frailty scores. We found that laparoscopic surgery is superior to open surgery for patients undergoing colon resection regarding morbidity and mortality. Increases in frailty magnify differences between approaches.