Fig 1.
Flowchart of inclusion and exclusion criteria.
NRS = numeric rating scale; OPS = German Surgical Procedure Coding; QUIPS = Quality Improvement in Postoperative Pain Treatment; QUIPSI = Quality Improvement in Postoperative Pain Treatment in Infants.
Table 1.
Patients’ characteristics (n = 2556).
Table 2.
Outcome parameters (n = 2556).
Fig 2.
Distribution of the NRS scores for pain on ambulation (pain during movement), maximal pain, and minimal pain on the first postoperative day after tonsillectomy.
Fig 3.
Functional relationship between age and maximal pain score based on fractional polynomials.
The corresponding transformations of age are given by sqrt(age)-1.715 and by sqrt(age)*ln(age)-1.85. The predicted results are shown on the scale of the linear predictor together with a 95% confidence interval.
Table 3.
Independent associations between baseline and process parameters and postoperative maximal pain.
Table 4.
Independent associations between pain-related interferes and pain therapy side effect and more postoperative maximal pain (>median NRS 6).
Fig 4.
Estimated probability for each item of the maximal pain score showing that most patients will experience a maximal pain NRS score of 5, 6, or 7 on the first postoperative day after tonsillectomy.
Fig 5.
Ranking of hospital specific random effects estimates together with a 95% confidence interval.
Even after adjustment to baseline and process parameters there still is a high variability of experienced pain between hospitals. Each bar and code number represent one of the 52 hospitals.