Results. Across 11 surgical specialties, 2933 of 20 881 surgeries (14.0%) were cancelled and of these, 2448 (83.5%) were for administrative or structural reasons. Compared with the data collected previously for general, gynecological and urological procedures, cancellation rates increased from 8.1% to 11.8%.
Why would a doctor cancel your surgery at preop? You are sick. (fevers, pneumonia, etc) High blood pressure. Abnormal labs. New information which shows increased risk. Medications which affect bleeding or anesthesia taken too close to surgery.
To calculate a cancellation rate, divide the number of orders cancelled by the number of transactions, then multiply by 100 to express as a percentage.
The reported rates for day-of-surgery cancellation rates vary widely among institutions from 10-40 %.
Results. Across 11 surgical specialties, 2933 of 20 881 surgeries (14.0%) were cancelled and of these, 2448 (83.5%) were for administrative or structural reasons. Compared with the data collected previously for general, gynecological and urological procedures, cancellation rates increased from 8.1% to 11.8%.
Table 1. Reasons of cancellationCancellation% Lack of operating room time 59.7% Medical Reasons of the patient 10.8% Patient did not turned up 16.2% Change in surgical plan 5.4%2 more rows
A raging sore throat with swollen tonsils is certainly a good reason to cancel surgery. Runny nose: If no other symptoms exist, a runny or drippy nose shouldn't interfere with anesthesia or recovery. A sinus infection, whether it's viral or bacterial, will result in postponing surgery.
To provide context to this figure, a systematic review found the self-reported regret rate for patients who have undergone general surgeries to be 'relatively uncommon' with an average prevalence of 14.4% across all studies (Wilson et al., 2017) .
If a procedure is cancelled in the procedure room before it's started, the coder should code the planned procedure with the appropriate modifier to indicate the anesthesia status: Modifier 73 – Procedure discontinued prior to the administration of anesthesia.