Department of anaesthesia, Smt. Shardaben Hospital, Smt. NHL Municipal medical college, Ahmadabad
Online published on 21 September, 2015.
Patients undergo few unnecessary investigations for detection of asymptomatic disease during routine preoperative assessment.
The aim is to find out unnecessary investigations carried out in elective general surgical patients during the period of March to August 2013. Investigations which evaluated were CBC, RBS, RFT, S. Electrolyte, LFT, ECG, CXR and urine analysis.
Percentages of unnecessary investigation were calculated. Percentages of abnormal investigations were assessed in the terms of how many patients were required treatments for that abnormal investigations and whether the plan of anaesthesia was changed or not. Only 10–13% of patients showed abnormal values in investigations related to biochemistry while 13.46% of patients of less than 40 years of age showed abnormality in ECG but none of them required any treatment before surgery or did not have any adverse event during peri-operative period. Only 4.18% of patients of more than 40 years of age showed abnormality that required treatment. Only 5.73% of patients aged more than 40 years were needed treatment for abnormal CXR results.
Investigations Protocol for preoperative patients to reduce workload of hospital is suggested.
