[A standard questionnaire to reduce the routine battery of preoperative tests for elective surgery]

Preoperative medical testing in the United States is estimated at $3,000,000 USD per year. In an attempt to reduce this cost, some key points have been described with the purpose of promoting appropriate preoperative measurements with an adequate costObjective: To evaluate the utility of a preoperative standardized questionnaire in adult patients prior to elective surgery to detect which patients could be operated without laboratory testing.

An observational, prospective and analytic study was carried out. The questionnaire has been applied to 176 patients, all adults scheduled for elective surgery from April 2011 to March 2012.

There were 57.4% females and 42.6% males. Ages varied between 18 and 85 years old, with a median of 46 years; 40.3% of the patients were > 50 years old and 59.7% were < 50 years old. The negative predictive value of the questionnaire is 95.88% (CI 95.34-96.42%).

This questionnaire is a useful instrument to determinate the necessity of preoperative laboratory testing in young, clinical healthy and elective surgery patients in a general hospital.