(Press-News.org) More than one third of all planned orthopaedic surgery procedures are re-booked, postponed or cancelled completely. The most common reasons are cancellation at the patient's own request or emergency cases having to be prioritised. These are the findings of a study carried out by the Sahlgrenska Academy in association with Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Postponed or cancelled operations are a problem both for the individual patient, who may have to wait longer for treatment, and for the hospital providing treatment in the form of poorer use of resources.
The Department of Orthopaedics at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Mölndal has now – together with researchers from the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy – initiated a research study to map the occurrence of, and identify the reasons for, planned operations being rebooked for new times, postponed until an unspecified time or cancelled completely.
39 percent are cancelled
The study, which reviewed 17,625 booked operations between 2007 and 2011, shows that 39 percent of all planned procedures for joint replacement, arthroscopy or foot and ankle surgery were cancelled or rebooked at least once.
The most common reasons for operations not being carried out as planned were cancellations at the patients' own request for various reasons (33%), the clinic being forced to purchase care from another care-giver due to the treatment guarantee (29%), incomplete pre-operative patient preparation (12%) and emergency patients being prioritised (9%).
Not unique to Sweden
"Many surgical departments carry out planned and emergency procedures in parallel," says Ulla Caesar, a doctoral student at the Sahlgrenska Academy. "This leads to planned operations often having to be rebooked, postponed or 'bought' from another care-giver since emergency operations have to be prioritised. This situation is not unique to Gothenburg and Sweden. Instead, it is probably a general problem for surgical care at all Swedish hospitals."
According to the researchers, having to rebook or cancel operations is sometimes unavoidable. However, the Sahlgrenska Academy study shows that many cancellations could be avoided by ensuring that patients are better prepared and informed before the procedure.
"Here, one good solution would be to apply person-centred care to a greater degree, making the patient more involved in and responsible for his or her own treatment," adds Elisabeth Hansson Olofsson, a researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy. "Another solution discussed in the study would be to have separate surgical departments for emergency and planned care.
Operational improvements
The study has been carried out using an application developed in-house, in which all electronic documentation, such as patient notes and various registers, can be combined and compiled. The results will now provide important data for operational improvements.
"Today, we have fewer rebookings than during the studied period," concludes Magnus Karlsson, Head of Orthopaedics at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. "Unfortunately, however, I fear that we will continue to experience a very large proportion of rebookings as long as patients are unable to book the time of their operations themselves. I believe that patients having a say in the time of their operations would be a significant success factor, making patients feel more involved."
INFORMATION:
The article Incidence and root causes of cancellations for elective orthopaedic procedures: a single center experience of 17,625 consecutive cases was published in the journal Patient Safety in Surgery in June.
Link to article: http://www.pssjournal.com/content/8/1/24
Contact:
Elisabeth Hansson Olofsson, senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy, elisabeth.hansson@orthop.gu.se
Ulla Caesar, doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy
ulla.caesar@gu.se
More than one-third of booked operations are re-booked
2014-09-02
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New synthesis method may shape future of nanostructures, clean energy
2014-09-02
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A team of University of Maryland physicists has published new nanoscience advances that they and other scientists say make possible new nanostructures and nanotechnologies with huge potential applications ranging from clean energy and quantum computing advances to new sensor development.
Published in the September 2, issue of Nature Communications the Maryland scientists' primary discovery is a fundamentally new synthesis strategy for hybrid nanostructures that uses a connector, or "intermedium," nanoparticle to join multiple different nanoparticles ...
University of Houston researcher looks at the future of higher education
2014-09-02
Most forecasts about the future of higher education have focused on how the institutions themselves will be affected – including the possibility of less demand for classes on campus and fewer tenured faculty members as people take courses online. Some changes already have begun.
When researchers at the University of Houston tackled the issue, they focused instead on what students will need in the future, including improved mentoring, personalized learning and feedback in real time.
The UH researchers identified three key themes:
A shift in the balance of power away ...
Family history of cardiovascular disease is not enough to motivate people to follow healthy lifestyle
2014-09-02
New research1 presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona shows that having a family history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is not enough to motivate people to follow healthy lifestyles.
Researchers used data from 188,139 users of HeartAge.me, a free online tool that engages people presenting their personal CVD risk factors as their estimated 'heart age', to test the hypothesis that those who have a family history of CVD are more likely to attend medical examinations and blood pressure checks and be motivated to adopt healthy diet and lifestyle ...
Researchers reveal carbon emissions of PlayStation®3 game distribution
2014-09-02
It's not always true that digital distribution of media will have lower carbon emissions than distribution by physical means, at least when file sizes are large.
That's the conclusion of a study published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology that looked at the carbon footprint of games for consoles such as PlayStation®3. Researchers found that Blu-ray Discs delivered via retail stores caused lower greenhouse gas emissions than game files downloaded over broadband Internet. For their analysis, the investigators estimated total carbon equivalent emissions for an 8.8-gigabyte ...
Oceans apart: Study reveals insights into the evolution of languages
2014-09-02
A new Journal of Evolutionary Biology study provides evidence that physical barriers formed by oceans can influence language diversification.
Investigators argue that the same factor responsible for much of the biodiversity in the Galápagos Islands is also responsible for the linguistic diversity in the Japanese Islands: the natural oceanic barriers that impede interaction between speech communities. Therefore, spatially isolated languages gradually diverge from one another due to a reduction of linguistic contact.
"Charles Darwin would have been amused by a study like ...
Coming or going? How Scottish independence could affect migration
2014-09-02
In light of the upcoming referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country, researchers present a set of predictions of the possible effects on internal and international migration.
If Scotland declares independence, international immigration will remain the most uncertain flow. However, if large inflows occur, they are likely to be balanced by emigration from Scotland. Migration between Scotland and the rest of the UK is expected to remain at similar levels to the present, irrespective of the outcome of the 2014 independence referendum.
"International ...
Salamander skin peptide promotes quick and effective wound healing in mice
2014-09-02
Move over antibiotic ointment, there might be a new salve to dominate medicine cabinets of the future, and it comes from an unlikely place—the lowly salamander. Salamanders may not be the cuddliest of animals, but they can regenerate lost limbs and achieve amazing recovery of seriously damaged body parts. Now, a new report published in the September 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, identifies a small protein (called a "peptide") from the skin of salamanders that may be the key to unlocking the secret of this amazing wound healing trick in humans.
"This research takes ...
NYC teens and young adults who abuse prescription at high risk for overdose
2014-09-02
The prevalence of opioid-involved overdoses has become an increasing concern to health officials both in NYC and nationally. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the number of unintentional opioid-involved overdose deaths in 2011 was nearly triple the number of such deaths in 2000. Much of the increase has been attributed to a dramatic rise in nonmedical prescription opioid (PO) use among teens and young adults, and, more recently, in heroin use among youth who transitioned from POs to heroin.
Now researchers affiliated with New York ...
INFORMS study on Iron Dome asks: What was its impact?
2014-09-02
A new study published by The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Iron Dome system, which Israeli authorities have credited with saving lives during the recent conflict with Hamas.
Modeling Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense and Israel's Iron Dome System is by Michael J. Armstrong of the Goodman School of Business, Brock University, in Ontario, Canada. It appears in the Articles in Advance section of the INFORMS journal Operations Research.
The study examines the previous Israel-Gaza ...
Biochemists find new treatment options for staph infections, inflammatory diseases
2014-09-02
MANHATTAN, KANSAS — Two Kansas State University biochemists have discovered a family of proteins that could lead to better treatments for Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogenic bacterium that can cause more than 60,000 potentially life-threatening infections each year.
Brian Geisbrecht, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and Kasra Ramyar, his research associate, are studying S. aureus, which is the cause of increasing common staph infections. Their work appears in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, in the article ...