The Swedish Perioperative Register: Description, validation of data mapping and utility

TLDR

Since 2013, Sweden’s national Swedish Perioperative Register (SPOR) has collected over four million surgical cases, recording patient identifiers, procedure types, diagnoses, perioperative timestamps, and quality metrics. The study describes SPOR and validates its data mapping, illustrating its use for monitoring national surgical capacity during the COVID‑19 pandemic. The authors validated SPOR by comparing local and central databases for accuracy and missingness, and quantified pandemic effects by constructing a weekly surgical‑procedure index using baseline January 2020 data. Validation showed almost 100% accuracy between local and central records, though some parameters had missing data, and the pandemic caused a sharp drop in weekly procedures from week 11 2020, as reflected in the constructed index.

Abstract

Since 2013 surgical units in Sweden have reported procedures to the national Swedish Perioperative Register (SPOR). More than four million cases have been documented. Data consist of patient ID, type of surgery, diagnoses, time stamps during the perioperative process (from the decision to operate to the time of discharge from the postoperative recovery area) and quality measures. This article aims to describe SPOR and validate data mapping. Also, we wished to illustrate the utility of the SPOR in assessing variations in national surgical capacity during the COVID-19 pandemia years 2020-2021.After a detailed description of SPOR, we report on the validation of data performed by comparing data from local databases with data stored in the central SPOR database, assessing missing values and accuracy. Effects of the pandemic on surgical capacity were described by developing an index, based on the number of performed surgical procedures per week during four production weeks in January 2020. Subsequent weeks were then compared with this baseline.The validation effort demonstrated nearly 100% data accuracy for the number and type of surgical procedures between local and central data. Missing data was a problem for some parameters. The number of performed surgical procedures decreased dramatically from week 11 in 2020 compared with normal production on a national basis, mainly impairing elective surgery.Data validation revealed good agreement between local and central databases. The changes in national surgical capacity during the pandemic were illustrated by an index based on the reported surgical production.