Laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy (LPD) remains one of the most complex and technically challenging procedures in pancreatic surgery, although LPD has developed rapidly worldwide in recent years. Traditionally, quality assessment of LPD has mainly focused on individual outcome measures such as morbidity, mortality, operative time, operative blood transfusion, readmission rates and length of hospital stay. However, individual outcome parameters do not reflect the multiple facets of the whole surgical procedure and do not measure actual variations among different hospitals. In this context, several outcome experts have suggested that composite measures of surgical quality may be better than individual outcome parameters to compare hospital performance. Textbook outcome (TO) is such a composite outcome measure of multiple desirable outcome metrics, which was first proposed in 2013 by Dutch colorectal surgeons in order to give a comprehensive summary of hospital performance. TO is realized when all of the desired outcome parameters are achieved following surgery and represents the optimal ("textbook") hospitalization.
Although several studies on TO in pancreatic surgery have been reported, relevant data on LPD are lacking, especially from China. The objective of this study was to assess TO among patients undergoing LPD in China, identify factors independently associated with achieving TO and analyze hospital variations regarding the TO after case-mix adjustment.
