Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
NELA includes patients treated in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland who are aged 18 years and over and who undergo an expedited, urgent, or emergency (NCEPOD definitions) abdominal procedure on the gastrointestinal tract. The NoLap cohort includes patients treated in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland who are aged 18 years and over, with a diagnosis of bowel ischaemia or bowel perforation for which surgery is indicated, but who do not undergo surgery.
Further information on the inclusion and exclusion criteria for NELA can be found here:
• Inclusion/exclusion criteria
• Inclusion/exclusion criteria in tabular format
• FAQs
Further information on the inclusion and exclusion criteria for NoLap can be found here:
• Inclusion/exclusion criteria
• FAQs
OPCS Labels for Procedures in the NELA Dataset
(UPDATED JUNE 2019)
There are over 400 OPCS codes that might be used to code patients undergoing emergency laparotomy. The codes in the form here should allow people to identify potential procedures within NELA, but hospitals will need to filter out those procedures that do not meet the NELA inclusion criteria.
We do not recommend that hospitals use OPCS codes as the sole mechanism to identify patients for inclusion into NELA. The inclusion/exclusion criteria are defined according to clinical definitions, not coding definitions. For this reason, it will be extremely difficult for hospitals to provide accurate audit data using OPCS codes to retrospectively identify patients.
The audit is intended to be completed by clinical teams as the patient progresses through the emergency laparotomy pathway. The data entry tool has been designed to facilitate this as much as possible.
Diagnostic Codes for NoLap
Diagnostic codes being used for NoLap can be found here.
IMPORTANT NOTE: THE ICD-10 DIAGNOSTIC CODES AND ALGORITHM ARE ONLY FOR CASE ASCERTAINMENT PURPOSES. THESE ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE IN SUBSEQUENT YEARS. NELA DOES NOT RECOMMEND USING ICD-10 DIAGNOSTIC CODES AS PART OF REALTIME DATA COLLECTION.