• pancreatic cancer
• pancreatic neoplasms
• pancreaticoduodenectomy
• risk factors
• risk assessment
• anesthesia

Abstract
Background It is important nowadays to understand what will be the "destiny" of a patient who underwent surgery even though there aren’t any definitive tools to answer this question.

Aim The aim of this study is to evaluate the ability to predict postoperative complications of the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP®) on our patients.

Methods The population for this study (278 patients) was obtained from the electronic institutional prospectively maintained database of patients who underwent pancreatoduodenectomy at the SD Chirurgia Generale I Universitaria of our institution and retrospectively analyzed.

Results No significant agreement in terms of overall complications were reported. As to hospitalization, we found a correlation despite the distribution of values being different. We worked on our data to create an experimental model for predicting the risk of postoperative outcomes. “Our” mathematical model has a fair agreement with the real onset of postoperative complications.

Conclusions We found that the NSQIP risk calculator overestimates the risk of onset of postoperative complications and underestimates the days of postoperative hospital stay compared to what we have observed in our patients.