OBJECTIVE: To identify the suspension rate on elective surgeries and to investigate their occurrences, and their cancelling causes. MEHTODS: This is an exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional study with a quantitative and qualitative approach which was carried out at the Department of General Surgery in a medium complexity Hospital. All surgeries performed from January 2007 to July 2008 were analyzed. RESULTS: Seven thousand nine hundred and thirty eight surgeries were performed during the period of the research from which there were 1806 urgencies (22.75%) and 6132 (77.25%) were scheduled. There were 1018 canceled surgeries in the programmed group, corresponding to a cancellation rate of 16%. Most of the reasons concerning cancellation were related to the patients (48.23%), such as unfavorable clinical conditions (50.3%) and absences (39.9%); the reasons related to the hospital were because of human resources allocation (23.77%), the organization of the unit (22.88%) and the allocation of material and equipment (5.12%). CONLCUSION: It was found that 41% of the canceled procedures should indeed not be performed. Some corrective management measures are necessary in order to diminish the cancellation rate.
Surgical procedures; operative; Surgery; Surgicenters; Quality control
