Clinical Research Directory

Adherence to Clinical Guidelines on Perioperative Diabetes Care

Patients who undergo major surgery face a 15-30% risk of serious adverse events, including a 1-5% mortality risk in the first month after surgery. For patients with diabetes, the risk is even greater, and it is often aggravated by complications associated with hyper- and hypoglycaemia. Complications, such as wound infections, cardiovascular, and neurological events, not only affect patients negatively, but it challenges health care systems due to prolonged length of stays and increased need of care post-discharge. Several factors make it particularly difficult to establish glycaemic control and stable blood sugar in patients with diabetes. Patients' usual glucose-lowering medications are often paused, and fasting is required at least six hours prior to the operation. Surgery induces a post-surgical stress response that may include both stress-hyperglycaemia and reduced gastrointestinal function. Furthermore, a patient's usual symptoms of hyper- and hypoglycaemia may be altered due to the anaesthetics. The existing guidelines on perioperative diabetic care include recommendations on treatment and glucose monitoring from the preoperative fasting period to the postoperative phase where oral intake of food and drinks can be resumed. Intravenous glucose-insulin infusions are used during preoperative fasting, intraoperatively and postoperatively until patients can resume oral intake of food and drinks. After this, subcutaneous insulin administrations following the sliding scale insulin regimen are administered to the patients to treat hyperglycaemia and supplemental glucose (perorally or intravenously) in case of hypoglycaemia. The blood sugar levels are monitored via point-of-care (POC) blood glucose tests every hour during glucose-insulin infusions and four to six times daily in the postoperative period. In spite of these guidelines, prospective studies have shown that blood glucose levels are outside the normal range in 40-60% of the time following major surgery, and usually due to hyperglycaemia. In this registry study, we investigated how guidelines for perioperative diabetes care were implemented in Danish hospitals from 2017-2023. The primary hypothesis was that, in the 20% of cases with detected hyperglycaemia, insufficient insulin was provided thus not following exiting guidelines.

Preoperative Walking Evaluation and Postoperative Outcome

The hypothesis is that physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of complications and death after surgery. Self-reporting of physical activity is prone to be unreliable. In order to obtain a better picture of patients' physical activity, we intend to investigate the association between the average number of steps and postoperative outcomes. Many other objective measures of physical activity are costly and time-consuming to perform; for example, exercise tests, extensive sampling, and longer questionnaires. The primary research question is: Do patients with a higher degree of physical activity, measured as the average number of steps recorded on the patient's mobile phone, have a reduced risk of peri/postoperative complications and death, measured as Days At Home alive at 30 days (DAH30)? Secondary research questions include: Is physical activity, measured as the average number of steps recorded on the patient's mobile phone, linearly linked to DAH30? Is physical activity, measured as the average number of steps recorded on the patient's mobile phone, associated with specific peri/postoperative organ impact, such as lung, heart, cerebral, infection, or kidney complications? Is physical activity, measured as the average number of steps recorded on the patient's mobile phone, also linked to long-term outcomes one year after surgery? Is physical activity, measured as the average number of steps recorded on the patient's mobile phone, solely associated with DAH30 and organ complications for specific patient groups in terms of age, comorbidities, and/or type of surgery?

Perioperative Impact of Physical Activity on Short- and Long-term Morbidity and Mortality

Over 300 million surgeries are performed globally every year. Complications after surgery - infections, cardiovascular conditions, postoperative pulmonary complications and renal impairment - affect survival and quality of life. Age and co-morbidity are unmodifiable factors, contributing to increased risk of these perioperative complications. However, a modifiable risk factor is physical activity. This study aims to test if self reported physical activity is associated to lower risk of perioperative morbidity and mortality.

ASPIRE (Aub-haS2 Plus bIomaRkErs)

ASPIRE is a prospective, multicenter, observational study that will assess the performance of AUB-HAS2 to predict the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events 30-days after a non-cardiac surgery and the additional role of high-sensitivity troponin T and NT-ProBNP biomarkers in the accuracy of different event prediction indexes after non-cardiac procedures.

The Fast-track Centre for Hip and Knee Replacement Database

This is a prospective study-registry on preoperative patient characteristics and postoperative complications in patients having fast-track hip and knee replacement surgery in 8 Danish dedicated arthroplasty departments from all five health regions in Denmark. The registry consists of detailed patient and physician reported preoperative characteristics and including prescribed medication and lab results. Follow-up is based on electronical medical records by dedicated nurses with physician backup and includes Clavien-Dindo and Comprehensive Complication Index scoring. All patients having day-surgery also completes a patient reported questionaire on health-care utilization and return to work by day 30. Finally, a machine-learning algorithm for identification of "high-risk" patients based on he preoperative data is included.