Prevention

Why?

• Complications are common: 39% of patients have a serious or life-threatening complication - 9% have a vaso-occlusive crisis ^a
• The risk is increased in patients aged > 20 ^a
• The risk of a crisis is increased if patients have had five or more previous hospital admissions ^a or neurological disease ^b

Increasing age, multiple previous hospital admission or neurological disease increase the risk of complications following cholecsytectomy

Patient	Prognostic Factor	Outcome	CER	OR (95% CI)	NNF+ (95% CI)
cholecystectomy a	aged > 20 independent	any complication at ?30 days	27%	2.01 (1.05 to 3.86)	6 (3 to 100)
	5+ previous hospital admission independent	sickle cell crisis at ?30 days	24%	3.02 (1.19 to 7.65)	4 (2 to 30)
	neurological disease independent	any complication at ?30  days	30%	2.76 (1.48 to 5.12)	4 (3 to 11)