discussing JACS articles.
This project exposes young
surgeons to JACS content while
encouraging direct social media
participation through selecting
the articles and discussing them
on Facebook. JACS also worked
with the RAS-ACS to publish
the winning essays from their
Spectacular Cases Session at
Clinical Congress 2015.
Special issues
JACS has partnered with three
distinguished surgical associations
to produce special issues that
highlight papers from their
annual meetings. Each year, the
April issue is devoted to papers
from the Southern Surgical
Association, the June issue
to the New England Surgical
Society, and papers from the
Western Surgical Association
are published in July.
Each fall, JACS also publishes
all of the abstracts from the ACS
Clinical Congress. In addition
to the Scientific Forum abstracts
published in the September
supplement in print, JACS now
publishes the remainder of the
abstracts from each Clinical
Congress online, including
Scientific Forum Papers and
Scientific Poster Presentations.
These abstracts are accessible
via the ACS mobile app.
111 years of keeping
surgeons informed
By the end of the 19th century,
the practice of surgery had been
transformed by “anesthesia,
asepsis, and a changing
understanding of disease.”
As an outgrowth of these
medical breakthroughs, in 1905
the successful Chicago, IL,
gynecologic surgeon, Franklin H.
Martin, MD, FACS, launched the
monthly peer-reviewed journal
Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics
(SG&O), and served as its
managing editor and publisher for
30 years. Dr. Martin envisioned
that the journal would be for
all surgeons and prospective
surgeons throughout the U.S.
and would focus on educating the
practicing surgeon rather than
the academic elite. To further this
aim, in 1910 SG&O announced
the first Clinical Congress, and
these annual meetings formed
the basis of the founding of the
ACS in 1913. In 1919, SG&O
became the College’s official
scientific journal, and 75 years
later was renamed the Journal of
the American College of Surgeons.
Even as JACS has evolved in its
now 111-year history, it continues
Dr. Martin’s vision of educating
general surgeons and providing
its readership “the highest quality
rapid retrieval of information
relevant to surgeons.”*
ACS NSQIP Surgical Risk
Calculator: A powerful
decision-making aid
The ACS NSQIP Surgical Risk
Calculator (www.riskcalculator.facs.
org) quickly and easily estimates
the risks of postoperative
complications for thousands
of surgical operations based
on a patient’s demographics,
comorbidities, and the type of
procedure to be performed. As
such, it has value as a decision-support aid and informed-consent tool, benefiting patients,
surgeons, and other providers
in the discussion of the risks of
surgery and whether surgery
is the best possible treatment
option for a specific individual.
The calculator also may be
used to help plan necessary
postoperative care, including the
likely need for intensive care,
cardiac monitoring, and so on.
The ACS NSQIP Surgical
Risk Calculator currently
uses a platform based on data
from more than 2. 7 million
patient records. These data are
collected by trained and audited
surgical clinical reviewers in
approximately 600 ACS NSQIP-
participating hospitals. Almost
2,000 different operations as
Context of the College. In: A Century
of Surgeons and Surgery: The American
College of Surgeons 1913–2012. Chicago, IL:
American College of Surgeons, 2012.
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