The authors studied the causes of the cancellation of elective surgeries and identified higher and lower cancellation rate groups. The most common cause of cancellation was excessive scheduling. Till now many studies were focused on anesthesia-controlled time (ACT) in operating room utilization. Therefore, we thought that there must be differences in the surgery-controlled time (SCT) of the high cancellation rate group and the low cancellation rate group.

We examined elective operations of the high and low cancellation rate groups which do not require arterial and central venous lines in an University Hospital for 15 days. The examined SCT variables were total case time (TCT), the time when the operator started the surgical procedure, operator procedure time (OPT), closing time, and OPT/TCT. ACT and between case time (BCT) were also examined.

We found that ACT, TCT, the time when the operator started the surgical procedure and operator procedure time showed statistically significant differences in the two groups. Other variables showed no significant differences.

These findings show that higher cancellation rate group of surgeries have longer SCT. The most meaningful difference between two groups is total case time.