McCarthy MH, Singh P, Nayak R, et al. - A retrospective cohort study was conducted to evaluate the American College of Surgeons National Surgery Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) Risk Calculator's ability to predict 30-day complications after spine surgery. Patients may be distinguished by surgical risk calculators at increased risk for complications, improve outcomes, enhance the informed consent process, and help modify risk factors. They established ACS NSQIP Risk Calculator from a cohort of >1.4 million patients, applying 2805 unique CPT codes. Researchers applied 21 patient predictors and the planned procedure to prognosticate the risk of 12 different outcomes within 30 days following surgery. Researchers conducted a retrospective chart review on patients who had undergone primary lumbar and cervical fusions with at least 30-day postoperative follow-up between 2009 and 2015 at a single-institution. They applied c-statistic as the measure of concordance for each model. A total of 237 lumbar and 404 cervical patients were included in the study. It was noted that ACS Risk-Calculator accurately prognosticated complications in the categories of “any complication” and “discharge to skilled nursing facility” for our cervical cohort and failed to indicate advantage for the lumbar cohort. The data indicate that for patients undergoing spinal surgery, it does not necessarily provide accurate information, although the ACS Risk-Calculator may be useful in general surgery.