MR1477 - EPIdemiology of Critical Care After Surgery (EPICCS)

Data-sharing agreement from NHS England Data Uses Register. Evidence status: source reported.

Organisation: ROYAL COLLEGE OF ANAESTHETISTS
Published: 2026-10-09
Source reference: DARS-NIC-88623-F2H1Q-v3.3
Jurisdiction: England
Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, subject to NHS England terms and exclusions

Register reference: DARS-NIC-88623-F2H1Q-v3.3
Applicant type: Academic
Data controllers: ROYAL COLLEGE OF ANAESTHETISTS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (UCL)
Agreement period: 2026-10-09 to 2028-11-13
For commercial purposes (as marked in the register): No
Release files listed by NHS England: 0

Data approved

Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC)
Hospital Episode Statistics Critical Care (HES Critical Care)
MRIS - Cause of Death Report
MRIS - Flagging Current Status Report

Objective, as published

The Sprint National Anaesthesia Projects (SNAPs) are 'snapshot' evaluation studies of clinical activity and patient-centred outcomes that are important and relevant to both patients and anaesthetists. The 2nd Sprint National Anaesthesia Project: Epidemiology of Critical Care provision after Surgery (SNAP-2: EpiCCS) will describe the epidemiology of perioperative risk and outcome, and critical care referral and admission after inpatient surgery in the UK. It also aims to examine whether planned postoperative critical care admission is effective as an intervention to reduce postoperative morbidity. After surgery, complications can sometimes occur, including mild ones like nausea, and more major ones such as infections, and very rarely death. One way which may help to prevent complications in some patients is to admit patients to a Critical Care Unit (CCU) after their operation, where they can receive more intensive nursing support, or treatments not available on other hospital wards. Critical care would normally only be considered for people who are having either a very big operation, or who have several significant background illnesses. Previous research studies have shown that the proportion of patients admitted to CCU after surgery differs between hospitals and countries. The study has been conducted to try and uncover some of the reasons for these findings, and to see if Critical Care admission after surgery improves patient recovery after surgery. The overall aim of the s…

Expected benefits, as published

The EPICCS study will evaluate research questions related both to policy and clinical practice. Policy: - Is there a sufficient numbers of critical care beds to meet the demand from surgery and to provide a high quality service? - Are surgical patients in hospitals where there is increased demand for critical care beds disadvantaged? Clinical practice: - Do current methods of risk prediction accurately predict short and longer term outcome after surgery? - Is critical care an effective intervention to prevent postoperative complications? Answering these questions will provide opportunity to substantially improve quality of perioperative care and the understanding of the factors which influence patient outcomes after major surgery. Publishing in peer-reviewed journals could result in • A g…

Benefits reported by the applicant

Study intended aims: 1. To describe the epidemiology of critical care admission after surgery 2. To determine the clinical effectiveness of planned critical care admission after surgery Research Questions (RQ) 1. How do clinicians determine the risk of postoperative mortality in clinical practice? 2. Do previously validated risk stratification tools accurately predict postoperative mortality? 3. On what basis do clinicians refer patients for planned postoperative critical care? 4. What factors influence whether patients actually receive planned postoperative critical care? 5. Does immediate critical care admission reduce postoperative morbidity and mortality? 6. Does short-term morbidity independently predict longer term mortality? A primary analysis (Aim 1) of the epidemiology of critica…

This is the applicant's own account; OpenHDI has not verified it.

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/data-access-request-service-dars/data-uses-register. Captured 2026-11-05.

Limitations: Data-sharing agreement as published in NHS England's Data Uses Register. An agreement permits access; actual data releases are listed separately. Expected and yielded benefits are as reported by the applicant and have not been independently verified. Long text fields can be cut off in NHS England's spreadsheet export at Excel's 32,767-character cell limit.