Operative Duration and Surgical Outcomes

JACS article: https://www.journalacs.org/article/S1072-7515(09)01411-2/pdf

One of the most consistent, evidenced-backed findings in surgical literature is the correlation between surgical duration and patient outcomes. As reported in the above study, a review of almost 300,000 surgeries in the NSQIP database found that longer operative duration was independently associated with increased infectious complications and hospital length of stay, after controlling for procedure and patient risk factors.

Those findings are corroborated by numerous other studies, including the below cited meta-analysis, which found a 14% increase in the likelihood of complications for every 30 minutes of additional operative time. Clearly, the complexity of any given operation dictates the time needed to successfully perform the procedure in a safe and effective manner. The opportunity here lies in modernizing the process to provide interactive visibility into the surgical plan for the entire OR team in a manner that improves efficiency and communication. That will, in turn, directly benefit the patient by eliminating any unnecessary time during the operation and anesthetic.

As the surgical flow is optimized, patient outcomes improve as indicated by metrics such as reduced complication rates and shorter hospital length of stay. A more efficient approach that enables optimized surgical duration also improves on-time starts and reduces the turnover time between cases. All of those elements combine to benefit the hospital system, surgeons and OR staff, and most importantly, the patients.

JSR article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022480418301872