The Postoperative Airway Compromise Score-First Steps to Developing a Postoperative Tool for the Assessment of Upper Airway-Related Complications Following Anterior Cervical Spine Surgery.

Background: Acute upper airway compromise is a rare but catastrophic complication after anterior cervical discectomy and fusion. This study aims to develop a score to identify patients at risk of acute postoperative airway compromise (PAC).

Methods: Potential risk factors for acute PAC were selected by a modified Delphi process. Ten patients with acute PAC were identified of 1466 patients who underwent elective anterior cervical discectomy and fusion between July 2014 and May 2019. A comparison group was created by a randomized selection process (non-PAC group). Factors associated with PAC and a P value of < 0.10 were entered into a logistic regression model and coefficients contributed to each risk factor's overall score. Calibration of the model was evaluated using the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test. Quantitative discrimination was calculated, and the final model was internally validated with bootstrap sampling.

Results: We identified 18 potential risk factors from our Delphi process, of which 6 factors demonstrated a significant association with airway compromise: age >65 years, current smoking status, American Society of Anesthesiologists class >2, history of a bleeding disorder, surgery of upper subaxial cervical spine (above C4), and duration of surgery >179 minutes. The final prediction model included 5 predictors with very strong performance characteristics. These 5 factors formed the PAC score, with a range from 0 to 100. A score of 20 yielded the greatest balance of sensitivity (80%) and specificity (88%).

Conclusions: The acute PAC score demonstrates strong performance characteristics. The PAC score might help identify patients at risk of upper airway compromise caused by surgical site abnormalities.