Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) Database for the Purpose of Research

Minimally invasive surgery has become the gold standard in surgical treatment for many indications, such as treatment of gallstones and acute appendicitis. For many other indications, the potential for minimally invasive approaches exist, but the data does not yet exist to establish it as the gold standard. In addition, there are certain patient factors such as age or weight that may influence the success of a minimally invasive procedure. While there are numerous articles in the literature reporting outcomes for minimally invasive therapies, these series are often notable for small patient populations and varying definitions of treatment success from study to study. Due to the lack of uniformity in reporting patient outcomes, an opportunity exists to establish a standardized database of a large number of patients undergoing these procedures. A standardized database will facilitate conducting prospective research of the risk factors and benefits of minimally invasive surgery. This analysis will not only enhance the care provided to these patients, it will reduce the use of ineffective therapy, thus promoting improved efficiency while increasing the quality of care provided within the UCSD system. This is our initial application. Several other departments at UCSD have developed similar databases. There are numerous examples of prospective databases used for similar purposes in the literature. Smithers, et al, used a prospective database of 446 patients undergoing esophagectomy to compare open to laparoscopic outcomes. Nesset, et al, maintained a database of bariatric surgery patients for two decades and was able to draw conclusions from a data set of 1584 patients. Even at smaller numbers, a prospective database is useful. Andrew, et al, described the improvement in outcomes over the learning curve in the first 201 patients undergoing laparoscopic roux-en-Y gastric bypass using such a database. Though labor intensive, Clemmesen, et al, found maintaining a database allowed them to improve care for their patients.