Mr Editor Infection at the operating site (ISO) is the most common postoperative surgical complication in general surgery. This is more frequent in cases of emergency interventions, compromises the patient's prognosis, causes high health costs, and signicantly increases the risk of reintervention. Negative pressure therapy (NPT) is an innovative strategy that was proposed about two decades ago, and has been gradually replicated around the world. This means that there are still many gaps in the evidence when it is used in many diseases and under different contexts. Nevertheless, it allows obtaining conclusive results in the time of healing, reduction of complications (mainly dehiscence and ISO), decrease in hospital stay, among other factors. In Latin America, there is very little evidence on the use of this strategy, and it is null regarding its use in emergency cases without being able ...

Critical syndromes are conditions that carry a high global burden of disease. Scoring systems are practical and reproducible aids that allow patients with more severe disease to be quickly identified and admitted to intensive care and to initiate structured and aggressive therapy. The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score is one of the most widely used in the world, as there are several versions and it is simple. However, with the appearance of the COVID-19, several studies showed that there was a disparity in the estimation of mortality and associated outcomes, with respect to race, which culminated in an excess of preventable mortality in certain racial groups. Constant evaluation of the performance of these scoring systems must be performed due to definitional updates, which may vary the accuracy of the predictive value. There is a very large evidence gap in this regard, as...