News Releases

For some surgeries, spinal anesthesia has been increasingly used instead of general anesthesia as a method to provide more comfort to patients and cut down on painkiller use. But research among hip fracture patients shows that this change may actually be having the reverse of its intended effect.

Known as the Center for Surgical Health (CSH), this first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary center, housed in the department of Surgery, provides a new access point into sustainable, high-value surgical care for patients who typically rely on the emergency room for treatment.

Patient-reported outcomes have become a critical part of improving surgical care because of their ability to capture patient experiences, such as quality of life and satisfaction, that can help inform treatment. However, for patients undergoing abdominal hernia repair — a common procedure performed on about 400,000 patients a year in the United States — a tool to effectively and practically measure those outcomes has not been widely accepted and implemented by clinics.

Penn Medicine’s L. Scott Levin, MD, FACS, the Paul B. Magnuson Professor of Bone and Joint Surgery, chairman of the department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and a professor of surgery in Plastic Surgery, was elected chair of the board of regents of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) during the College’s virtual Clinical Congress held earlier this month.

Designed to help surgeons, anesthesiologists, and internists understand the safety of putting someone with cirrhosis through a specific surgery, the new tool can lead to thorough conversations between clinicians and patients while potentially encouraging patients and surgeons to pursue surgeries that they may otherwise have declined.