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Many hospitals do not have a structured process
of consent, the attainment of which can often be rather ‘last-minute’
and somewhat chaotic. This is a surprising state of affairs as spinal
surgery is a high-risk surgical specialty with potential for expensive
litigation claims. More recently, the Montgomery ruling by the United
Kingdom Supreme Court has placed the subject of informed consent
into the spotlight. . There is a paucity of practical guidance on how a consent process
can be achieved in a busy clinical setting. The British Association
of Spinal Surgeons (BASS) has convened a working party to address
this need. To our knowledge this is the first example of a national
professional body, representing a single surgical specialty, taking such
a fundamental initiative. . In a hard-pressed clinical environment, the ability to achieve
admission reliably on the day of surgery, in patients at ease with
their situation and with little likelihood of late cancellation,
will be of great benefit. It will reduce litigation and improve
the
The effective capture of outcome measures in
the healthcare setting can be traced back to Florence Nightingale’s
investigation of the in-patient mortality of soldiers wounded in
the Crimean war in the 1850s. Only relatively recently has the formalised collection of outcomes
data into Registries been recognised as valuable in itself. With the advent of surgeon league tables and a move towards value
based health care, individuals are being driven to collect, store
and interpret data. Following the success of the National Joint Registry, the British
Association of Spine Surgeons instituted the British Spine Registry.
Since its launch in 2012, over 650 users representing the whole
surgical team have registered and during this time, more than 27 000
patients have been entered onto the database. There has been significant publicity regarding the collection
of outcome measures after surgery, including patient-reported scores.
Over 12 000 forms have been directly entered by patients themselves,
with many more entered by the surgical teams. Questions abound: who should have access to the data produced
by the Registry and how should they use it? How should the results
be reported and in what forum? Cite this article:
Due to economic constraints, it has been suggested that joint replacement patients can be followed up in primary care. There are clinical, ethical and academic reasons why we must ensure that our joint replacements are appropriately clinically and radiologically followed up to minimise complications. This Editorial discusses this.
