[Analyses of the related factors for surgery suspension at a general surgery service of medium complexity]

To identify the suspension rate on elective surgeries and to investigate their occurrences, and their cancelling causes.

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.

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%).

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.