The following is a summary of “Immune Phenotype and Postoperative Complications After Elective Surgery,” published in the December 2023 issue of Surgery by Moris, et al.
For a study, researchers sought to describe and measure patients’ immune system changes before and after choice surgery. Elective surgery is a planned, controlled harm to a person. Even though there are general patterns in how people react to pain, each person is different. This made it harder to predict how the surgery would turn out, even after normal processes, and it may lead to problems for people who can’t fix their injuries. One possible difference is how immune cells mature. The phenotype of immune cells changes depending on how each person reacts to external stimuli.
They entered 248 patients in a prospective study that allowed them to collect a lot of biospecimens and clinical data from people going to have the surgery they chose. Before the surgery and right away after coming back to the postanesthesia care room, peripheral blood was taken. Complications after surgery that happened in the 30 days following surgery were recorded.
Since these people chose to have surgery, the results were mostly good. After an average follow-up of 6 months, all patients were still alive after 30 days. However, 20.5% of the group had a problem after surgery, such as an illness, going back to the hospital, or a problem with the system. They found a lot of different immune aging and terminal differentiation patterns in people who had surgery. More importantly, traits that showed more T-cell maturity and aging were linked to problems after surgery and were already there before surgery. The immune repertoire at the start of surgery may show if someone is immune to surgical injuries and help figure out the risk of problems after surgery.