Dr. Joshua John‑Ram Schacter (speaker) frames surgery as generally safe but not risk‑free; he notes that some patients experience painful, debilitating complications often because of poor overall health. He proposes offering interventions to improve patient health (a holistic/prehabilitation approach) to reduce the need for surgery, treating surgery as the end of a care spectrum rather than the first option.
Surgery is not without its risk. We do have a very safe surgical system here in the United States from a perspective of we don't lose a lot of patients, and we're always in the orthopaedic survey of excellence. We're always striving to improve our surgical outcomes. That is number one goal. And I will say in defensive hospital systems that my hospital system is 100% on board with anything to make surgery safer or better. But even in the best situation, we have patients who have painful and debilitating complications. And there's several reasons why that happens. Our overall health is decreased. And so that got me thinking. Well, if we're doing too many surgeries on patients who really aren't healthy enough, then maybe we can start to offer to help patients get healthier and maybe even avoid doing a surgery altogether, with surgery as sort of at the end of a spectrum of care.
Sam.
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