The assessment of operating theatre requirements for emergency surgery.
Acute surgical operations were analysed over a period of two months. Recordings were made of the times of admission, the start and finish of surgery, and the surgical specialty. Fifteen emergency operations per day used 23.5 hours operating theatre time. The delay from admission to surgery averaged eight hours but varied from a few minutes to over 24 hours. The acute work is increasing by 5% per annum and now comprises over 50% of the 10,500 operations done each year at Middlemore. Two thousand of the remaining operations form a separate group consisting of repeat operations, operations for complications, and transfers from other disciplines and hospitals. Waiting list operations have fallen from nearly 5000 in 1981 to 3000 in 1988 as more theatre time and hospital beds are used for emergency cases. The trends justify the building of three extra theatres to meet the community needs of the next decade.
Department of Anaesthesia, Middlemore Hospital, Auckland.
J T
JT
Cranfield
R E
RE
Comber
D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D009520:New Zealand; D009873:Operating Rooms / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*