Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Jul 27, 2019; 11(7): 308-321
Published online Jul 27, 2019. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v11.i7.308
Vascular calcification does not predict anastomotic leak or conduit necrosis following oesophagectomy
Benjamin J Jefferies, Emily Evans, James Bundred, James Hodson, John L Whiting, Colm Forde, Ewen A Griffiths
Benjamin J Jefferies, James Bundred, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
Emily Evans, Colm Forde, Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham B15 2WB, United Kingdom
James Hodson, Institute of Translational Medicine, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
John L Whiting, Ewen A Griffiths, Department of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham B15 2TH, United Kingdom
Ewen A Griffiths, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Jefferies BJ, Forde C, Whiting JL and Griffiths EA designed the research; Jefferies BJ, Bundred J and Evans E performed the research; Jefferies BJ and Hodson J analysed the data; Jefferies BJ and Griffiths EA wrote the manuscript; all authors critically reviewed and approved the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was registered No. CARMS-15096 with University Hospitals Birmingham Clinical Audit Registration and Management System (CARMS), who granted ethical approval.
Informed consent statement: Local ethical review was obtained and confirmed that no consent was needed due to the non-interventional nature of the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STOBE statement checklist.
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/
Corresponding author: Ewen A Griffiths, MD FRCS, Consultant Surgeon, Department of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham B15 2TH, United Kingdom. ewen.griffiths@uhb.nhs.uk
Telephone: +44-12-13715883 Fax: +44-12-1371 5896
Received: May 2, 2019
Peer-review started: May 9, 2019
First decision: June 12, 2019
Revised: June 17, 2019
Accepted: July 24, 2019
Article in press: June 24, 2019
Published online: July 27, 2019
Core Tip

Core tip: Vascular calcification does not predict anastomotic leak (AL) or gastric conduit necrosis (CN) following oesophagectomy for malignancy. There is no association between vascular calcification and severity of AL or CN. AL is significantly more common in female vs male patients. Gastric CN is significantly more common in females, patients with diabetes, a history of smoking and a higher American Society of Anaesthesiologists grade. Inter-rater reliability for calcification scoring of the vessels supplying the gastric tube is excellent.