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Megan Rolfzen, MD, receives FAER Mentored Research Training Grant for the two-year study

Longer hospital stays. Increased ICU time. Higher readmission rates.

Recovering from surgery can be longer and more complicated for patients with depressive symptoms — especially if these symptoms go unrecognized and/or untreated.

A new University of Michigan Medical School project aims to predict whether patients are at risk of developing depressive symptoms after surgery. The end goal? Early intervention, leading to better outcomes for patients.

“Surgery is a vulnerable time for patients. It can also be a major turning point in a patient’s life,” said Megan Rolfzen, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology and the project’s lead.  

“Our goal is to use information that already exists in the electronic health record to better identify patients who may be at risk for depressive symptoms after surgery, without adding more screening burden for patients or clinicians.”

Rolfzen received a Mentored Research Training Grant (MRTG) from the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) for this project. The grant supports early-career physician-scientists in developing the skills and preliminary work needed to become independent investigators.

The two-year award will allow Rolfzen to:  

• Identify and characterize depressive symptom trajectories after surgery. Rolfzen’s project will use existing electronic health record data — including diagnosis codes, symptom scales, medications, and unstructured free-text data — to identify patterns in depressive symptom trajectories in the six months after surgery.
• Predict postoperative depressive symptoms. The project will also use computational text analysis to examine unstructured clinical notes, including nursing notes, social work notes, discharge summaries and post-discharge telephone encounters. These notes may contain clues about a patient’s motivation, functional recovery, emotional state or social circumstances that are not captured elsewhere in the record.

Using these data, Rolfzen hopes to develop predictive models that help clinicians recognize at-risk patients earlier and connect them with appropriate support.

“Not everyone’s depression looks the same,” Rolfzen said. “By understanding different symptom patterns after surgery, we can begin to think about more personalized ways to support recovery.”

The FAER MRTG program provides mentorship in support of a researcher's development. Rolfzen’s team of mentors and collaborators includes: Karsten Bartels, MD, PhD, MBA, primary mentor; Afton Hassett, PsyD, secondary mentor; Chad Brummett, MD, tertiary mentor; Peter Nagele, MD, Michael Burns, MD, PhD, Amy Bohnert, PhD, Anne Fernandez, PhD, and Lars Fritsche, PhD.