Management and outcomes of gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low, middle and high income countries: protocol for a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Teams of 3 collaborators collected data for two week periods on all consecutive (i.e. one after the other) patients undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal surgery. There was no minimum number of patients per centre, so long as all eligible patients during the two week data collection period were included. Teams could collect any two week period they wished between Jan and July 2016, with 30 day follow up. Multiple teams at any participating centre were encouraged provided they collected non-overlapping two-week periods, and each team could collect one than one two week period if they wished.30 datapoints per patient were collected via a secure online website.

GlobalSurg I aimed to identify variation in outcome of emergency intra-abdominal surgery across international settings in order to determine whether globally relevant quality improvement strategies are needed within acute surgical units.