Patient selection: age >= 18 years of age
Pulmonary complications: ARDS, acute hypoxemia, empyema, hemothorax, pleural effusion, pneumonia, pneumothorax, pulmonary embolus, respiratory arrest
Parameters:
(1) surgical invasiveness index for spinal surgery (ranges from 0 to 48)
Predictors for pulmonary complications from multivariate analysis:
(1) COPD (relative risk 4.0)
(2) surgical invasiveness >5 (relative risk 4.6)
(3) diagnosis of trauma (vs degenerative; relative risk 4.1)
Other factors from univariate analysis:
(1) age > 65 years
(2) diabetes
(3) cerebrovascular disease
(4) hypertension
(5) renal disease
(6) dementia
