A Surgical Checklist for When Things Go Wrong

Failure to manage life-threatening complications effectively in surgical patients is the largest source of variation for surgical mortality among hospitals. Although using checklists during routine operative care yields substantial benefits in perioperative morbidity and mortality, little data exist on using checklists during intraoperative crises.

Researchers performed a randomized, controlled trial at three institutions (one academic medical center and two community-based hospitals) to examine use of checklists to assist in managing surgical crisis scenarios (i.e., anaphylaxis, malignant hyperthermia, hemorrhage followed by ventricular fibrillation, air embolism, hypotension followed by unstable bradycardia/tachycardia, and asystolic cardi…