title: Assessment of Some Public Hospitals in Turkey Regarding Anaesthetist, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Equipment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Every year, 230 million patients undergo major general surgery with anaesthesia worldwide, and 7 million resulted with major complications. Monitorisation and equipment has a great role in increasing patient safety and safe surgery during anaesthesia.
  
  
  METHODS
  Turkey is divided into 12 Eurostut-NUTS regions and 26 subregions statistically. Totally, 303 hospitals that are included in these regions were enrolled in this descriptive trial. The hospitals were contacted by telephone between October 2012 and August 2013. Data collecting forms were e-mailed to any of the anaesthetists or anaesthesia technicians of the hospital and they were requested to fill the forms and forward them to one of the investigators.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Data were obtained from 221 of 303 hospitals (73%). Twenty-three hospitals were tertiary (university and education and research), 21 were city and 177 were county hospitals. No anaesthetist, operating rooms or intensive care units were available in 114 of the county hospitals. Anaesthetists were responsible for 61% of these active working theatres. Electrocardiogram, heart rate, non-invasive blood pressure and saturation could be monitored in 97% of them. End-tidal carbon dioxide could be monitored in 91% of at least one operating room in these hospitals. However, if the subject became to end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring in every room, this ratio decreased to 63%. Defibrillators were absent in 6% of these rooms. Adult intensive care units were available in 33% of the hospitals and paediatric intensive care units were available in 32.4%; the responsibility of these intensive care units were carried out by anaesthetists at a 91.4% ratio. End-tidal carbon dioxide could be monitored in 54% of these units; invasive monitorisation could be applied in 68.4% if needed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It was observed that hospitals have different standards according to their infrastructures of anaesthesia and intensive care unit equipment. We think that the elimination of these differences is an important step with respect to increasing patient safety and enhancement of the service quality in hospitals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Zehra İpek
authors.initials: Zİ
authors.lastname: Arslan
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Mehmet
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ertargın
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Cavit Işık
authors.initials: CI
authors.lastname: Yavuz
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Hülya Yılmaz
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Yanal
authors.affiliation: Clinic of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Ankara Paediatrics Haematology-Oncology Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: Yeşim
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Şenaylı
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Zehra Nur
authors.initials: ZN
authors.lastname: Baykara
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
authors.forename: Mine
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Solak
keywords: Anaesthesia; airway; equipment; intensive care unit; monitor; operating room