Harmonized procedure coding system for surgical procedures of five European countries (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Surgical site infections (SSI) are frequent hospital acquired complications. Ongoing surveillance pro-grams evaluate the incidence of SSI worldwide. However, incidence rates are only estimated by the analyses of indicator procedures to date. OBJECTIVE To further assess procedure specific SSI rates, the harmonization of international procedure codes is necessary. METHODS We compared existing surgical procedure coding systems of five European countries (France, Ger-many, Italy, Spain, and the UK) and distributed a simplified code to all existing country-specific codes. Based on mode and extent of the surgical procedure and the surgical site, 153 codes were defined, distributed, and characterized within the presented coding system. Additionally, minimally invasive, laparoscopic or open surgical approaches were considered, whereas eye surgery and di-agnostic procedures were excluded. RESULTS A total number of 15432 surgical procedures were assigned to 153 SALT codes from 10 specialties. Almost 4000 (26%) procedure codes from the SALT coding system were classified as orthopaedic and trauma surgeries, thus this medical field represents the most diverse group within the SALT coding system, followed by abdominal surgical procedures with 2390 (15%) procedure codes. CONCLUSIONS The Europe-wide SALT procedure code gives the opportunity to harmonize big data sets containing surgical procedures from international centres, and may simplify comparability of future interna-tional trial findings.