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Three words from SNAP3: ‘frailty really matters’!

We're excited to share the results of our research project, the Sprint National Anaesthesia Project 3 (SNAP3).

Author: Dr Claire Swarbrick, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital NHS Trust Anaesthetics 

More than 2,500 local investigators across 214 hospitals who took part collectively contributed to recruiting 7,134 patients.

The project comprised two surveys and a large cohort study:

  • the organisational survey aimed to describe the existing perioperative medicine services available for older surgical patients in the UK and the Republic of Ireland (ROI)
  • the medical registrar survey aimed to describe the numbers of older surgical patients referred for urgent medical review outside of the existing perioperative medicine services
  • the cohort study is a prospective observational study which aimed to recruit all older patients undergoing a surgical procedure in the UK during a five-day period in March 2022. From comparing our cohort with NHS and National Audit Project data, we believe that we have captured a representative sample of our target population – older surgical patients.