Anesthesia & Clinical Research
Open Access

Abstract

Magnitude and Reasons of Surgical Case Cancellation at a Specialized Hospital in Ethiopia

Addis Shiferaw Ayele, Misrak Weldeyohannes and Yohannes Tekalegn

Background: Elective surgical case cancellation refers to any elective surgical case that is booked into the operation theatre list on the day prior to surgery but were not operated on the intended day of the schedule. Elective surgical case cancellation is common and can have significant adverse effects. The cancellation of planned surgeries causes prolonged waiting times, harm to patients, and is a waste of scarce resources. Reasons for cancellations are complex because they are related to patients, organizational issues, and clinical staff.
Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted from February 1 to March 1, 2016. All elective surgical cases which were scheduled for the surgical procedure during the study period were included in the study. Data were collected by using pretested structured questionnaires and entered into SPSS version 20 for analysis. The result of the study was reported in the form of frequency tables, pie chart and bar graphs.
Results: A total of 369 patients was scheduled for the elective surgical procedure during the study period. Among those 244 (66.1%) patients were operated on their planned day of surgery and 125 (33.9%) surgical procedure were canceled. The main reasons for cancellations were a shortage of time (39.2%); management related (21.48%) and patient-related factors (20%).
Conclusion: Cancellation of elective surgical procedures on the scheduled day of surgery was high during the study period. Most of the reasons for the cancellation was the shortage of time and management related and patient-related factors. Most of the reasons could be preventable. To reduce this high cancellation rate, implementation of patient preoperative assessment should be applied, ensuring realistic scheduling of patient considering time spent for each surgical procedure, reducing time spent in the operating room and better handling resources should be applied.

Published Date: 2019-12-23; Received Date: 2019-11-25