If you or your loved one is being recommended an emergency laparotomy, this is a scary and difficult time. Emergency laparotomy surgery is serious, major surgery and just under one in ten of all patients who have to have this surgery in the UK die in hospital.

Because the surgery is urgent, and hospitals can be busy places, often it can feel that there is not much time to ask questions or have them answered. However it is important for people to understand what is happening to them, and to understand all their choices or options in order to make the decision about what is best for them.

To support these discussions it might be helpful to ask about four areas of the decision someone is being asked to make - the benefits, the risks, the alternatives, and what happens if we do nothing - BRAN (Benefits, Risks, Alternatives, do Nothing)

More information on shared decision making is available here, and a leaflet on BRAN is available here.

Whilst this website talks mostly about planned rather than emergency surgery, it is still applicable to urgent and emergency surgery.