AIM: The present study evaluates the performance of the POSSUM, the American Society of Anesthetists (ASA),APACHE and Childs classification in predicting mortality and morbidity in hepatopancreaticobiliary (HPB) surgery.We describe especially the limitations and advantages of risk in stratifying the patients.METHODS: We investigated 177 randomly chosen patients undergoing eledive complex HPB surgery in a single institution with a total of 71 pre-operative and intra-operative risk factors.Primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality and morbidity.Ordered logistic regression analysis was used to identify individual predictors of operative morbidity and mortality.RESULTS: The operative mortality in the series was 3.95% .This compared well with the p-POSSUM and APACHE predicted mortality of 4.31% and 4.29% respectively. Postoperative complications amounted to 45% with 24 (13.6%)patients having a major adverse event. On multivariate analysis the pre-operative POSSUM physiological score (OR = 1.18,P = 0.009) was superior in predicting complications compared to the ASA (P = 0.108), APACHE (P = 0.117)or Childs classification (P = 0.136). In addition, serum sodium, creatinine, international normalized ratio (INR),pulse rate, and intra-operative blood loss were independent risk factors. A combination of the POSSUM variables and INR offered the optimal combination of risk factors for risk prognostication in HPB surgery.CONCLUSION: Morbidity for elective HPB surgery can be accurately predicted and applied in everyday surgical practice as an adjunct in the process of informed consent and for effective allocation of resources for intensive and high-dependency care facilities.