Perioperative medicine & outcomes
Worth the Risk? Standardized Screening to Identify Substance Use Among Patients Before Surgery
Authors' conclusion
Standardized TAPS screening detected preoperative unhealthy substance use more frequently than routine clinician documentation
Study context
- Population
- Adults (≥18 y) at a preoperative clinic, August to September 2021
- Participants
- 240 surgical patients
- Exposure
- Standardized TAPS screening vs routine clinical documentation in the EHR
- Outcome
- Identification of unhealthy substance use before surgery (positive screens)
Methodological detailssingle preoperative clinic
- Single preoperative clinic
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Positive screens for unhealthy substance use
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
Age, patients with vs without unhealthy substance use
- Patients with unhealthy substance use younger (years)
- 50.8 vs. 56.7
- P =0.003
Alcohol misuse identified
- Alcohol misuse revealed by TAPS
- 30.8%
- Alcohol misuse in clinician documentation
- 0%
- P <0.001
Diagnostic performance of clinician documentation for any unhealthy substance use
- Sensitivity of clinician documentation, lower vs TAPS
- 31%
- Accuracy (AUC) of clinician documentation, lower vs TAPS
- 0.65
TAPS-positive patients missed by EHR documentation
- Of 104 TAPS-positive patients, missed by EHR documentation
- 69.2%
Original publication
Worth the Risk? Standardized Screening to Identify Substance Use Among Patients Before Surgery. Ann Surg. Published 29 May 2024. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →