Measures of physical fitness and postoperative mortality in patients with colorectal cancer: national cohort study

Background

Measures of physical fitness are essential for case mix adjustment when comparing surgical outcomes between patient groups, surgical approaches, and healthcare providers. Commonly used measures include clinician-reported American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status, as well as the Secondary Care Administrative Records Frailty (SCARF) index, derived from routinely collected administrative hospital data. This study compared how these measures of physical fitness, perform for case mix adjustment of postoperative colorectal cancer mortality.