Surgical audit of emergency surgery with the Possum system

Objective: to evaluate the validity of physiologic and operative severity score for the enumeration of mortality and morbidity (possum) system in the audit of emergency surgery. material and methods: this cross sectional study was conducted in the department of surgery,hayatabad medical complex,peshawar over a period of one year from june 2009 to may 2010. all the patients undergoing emergency midline laparotomy were subjected to risk-adjusted audit using the possum scoring system. the observed mortality rate was compared to the possum-predicted mortality. results: out of 150 patients included in the study,32 patients died within 30 days of operation. the possum calculated deaths were 27. there was no statistically significant difference between the 'observed' and 'predicted' deaths. conclusion: the possum scoring system is a good predictor of 30 day mortality for the patients undergoing emergency laparotomy.