Title: Quality of recovery: comparing “Postoperative Quality of Recovery Scale” with “Quality of Recovery - 15”

Background and Goal of Study
Quality of recovery (QoR) is an important postoperative outcome measure. Several tools have been developed to assess the multidimensional variables of QoR. The aim of this study was to compare two scales designed for QoR evaluation: Postoperative Quality Recovery Scale (PQRS) and Quality of Recovery - 15 (QoR-15).

Materials and Methods
After approval by the institutional ethics committee, an observational, prospective study was performed in 206 patients scheduled for elective surgery. Patients included were older than 18 years, undergoing plastic, gynecologic, urologic and general surgery, under general anesthesia, admitted to the Post Anesthetic Care Unit (PACU). Exclusion criteria were: inability to give informed consent. Portuguese version of QoR-15 was applied before (D0) and 24 hours after surgery (D1). PQRS Portuguese version was applied at D0 and after surgery at minute 15 (T15) and 40 (T40), at day 1 (D1) and 3 (D3) evaluating recovery in five domains: physiological, nociceptive, emotive, activities of daily living and cognition. Recovery was defined as return to baseline values or better for all questions within each PQRS’ domain. Poor quality of recovery (PQR) was defined as recovery in less than 2 domains at D1. The Mann-Whitney test, Chi-square or Fisher’s exact tests were used for comparisons. 

Results and Discussion
A total of 182 patients were included in this study. Incidence of PQR was 13.2%. At D1 patients with PQR had lower median total QoR-15 score (106 vs 125, p=0.001). Considering each QoR-15 item, patients with PQR had lower median scores at 3 of them: able to look after personal toilet and hygiene unaided (p=0.002), able to return to work or usual home activities (p<0.001) and having a feeling of general well-being (p=0.001). PQR patients had a lower preoperative median total QoR-15 score (131 vs 138, p=0.012). Patients with recovery in less than 2 domains at T15 and at T40 had lower median QoR-15 scores at D0 (132 vs 145, p<0.001 and 129 vs 141, p=0.019, respectively). Patients with recovery in less than 2 domains at D3 had lower median QoR-15 scores at D1 (108 vs 126, p=0.026).


Conclusion(s)
The PQRS and the QoR-15 have concordant results 24 hours after surgery and patients identified as having PQR with PQRS have lower scores in Qor-15.

Quality of recovery: comparing &#8220;Postoperative Quality of Recovery Scale&#8221; with &#8220;Quality of Recovery - 15&#8221;

Quality of recovery: comparing “Postoperative Quality of Recovery Scale” with “Quality of Recovery - 15”