NAP7 – have we lost the point?

We would like to thank and applaud the authors and contributors to the 7th National Audit Project (NAP7) for such a thorough investigation and Anaesthesia for its dissemination and sharing of content [1]. However, we must ask if the primary purpose of the project has been lost among the volume of papers (we think this is the 12th)? Having spoken to a number of colleagues, none of them admit to having read all of them. Rather, comments include how long the report [2] is (567 pages compared with the 219 pages of NAP4 [3]); how many papers have been published (12 compared with 2 for NAP4); and the confusion as to what they should read.

We appreciate there are a lot of data and discussion points, but we fear the key messages relating to the primary purpose of the project may have been missed or lost in the volume of published materials. We believe the authors would have been better focusing more on the primary outcome rather than the overwhelming number of secondary outcomes and publication noise.

That said, the additional materials produced are excellent, namely the infographic [4] and overview slides [5]. We very much hope to continue seeing these being produced in future NAPs.