Grant: Project Grant

Over 10% of all patients who have surgery (aged 45 and above) will suffer a major complication and over 1.5% of all adults will die within 30 days after surgery. The most common major complications are injury to the heart muscle, bleeding, and infection. These complications happen on the surgical ward or at home, after hospital discharge. We need better ways of monitoring patients so that we know, ahead of time, if they are going to develop complications and so we act early to stop the complications from happening. In this study, we will use a new monitoring device called Vitaliti- a light weight device worn around the neck that can monitor patients' vital signs and heart beat continually, while they go about their day. One thousand patients aged 45 years or older who have surgery (not including heart surgery), and who are at risk for serious complications will wear the Vitaliti device on the surgical ward until they are released from hospital. We will know which patients are at risk of complications because we will do a blood test before surgery that tells us about risk. We will also look for other things that put people at risk such as disease of the veins and arteries. When patients wear the Vitaliti device, it will send constant readings of their vital signs and heartbeat to our hospital monitoring centre. We will use a type of artificial intelligence called machine learning to study these readings. We will look for slight changes in vital signs that may lead to heart muscle injury, bleeding and infection. Once we know what these signs are, we can then develop an alert system to warn us so we can stop the complications before they happen. At present, patients die from infection and other serious complications after surgery. This work is an opportunity to make a real difference in patient care after surgery.