INTRODUCTION Acute care surgical services provide timely comprehensive emergency general surgical care while optimizing the use of limited resources. At our institution, 50% of the daily dedicated operating room (OR) time allocated to the Acute Care Emergency Surgery Service (ACCESS) came from previous elective general surgery OR time. We assessed the impact of this change in resource allocatio...

OBJECTIVES To quantify the occurrence of significant medical complications following elective colorectal resection and investigate potential differences in medical morbidity following open and minimal access colorectal surgery. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics, which is a prospectively maintained national database. SETTING All patients undergoing colorectal resec...

BACKGROUND The surgeon's attention to the patient's underlying psychological state is essential to attaining desired outcomes. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and severity of psychological disorders in patients undergoing elective spine surgery. METHODS In this case-control study, associated psychological disorders were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) qu...

BACKGROUND The vast majority of studies emphasize the greater morbidity/mortality for elective spine surgery in morbidly obese patients. METHODS This review focuses on the increased morbidity/mortality of performing elective spinal operations in morbidly obese patients. There are two definitions of morbid obesity; a body mass index (BMI) of equal to or greater than 35 plus two major comorbid ...

AIM To review research on early oral feeding following elective, open colorectal surgery. BACKGROUND Fasting following gastrointestinal surgery is a traditional surgical practice, based on fears of causing postoperative complications if oral intake begins before bowel function returns, but fasting following elective surgery is questionable as a best practice. METHODS Searches in Journals@Ov...

BACKGROUND Oral antiseptics reduce nosocomial infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia in critically ill medical and surgical patients intubated for prolonged periods. However, the role of oral antiseptics given before and after planned surgery is not clear. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to determine the effect of oral antiseptics (chlorhexidine or povidone-iodine...

PURPOSE Elective nephron sparing surgery is established as an alternative to radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma if tumors are small (4 cm or less, stage T1a). We compared outcomes in patients with renal cell carcinoma 4 cm or less (small) vs more than 4 cm (large) who were treated with nephron sparing surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between 1979 and 2006, 618 patients underwent elect...

Objective: We investigated the data of the survival and life quality in patients with stage 2 endometrial carcinoma who underwent endocrine treatment assisted elective surgery in order to confirm the clinical value and provide data support for its promotion. Methods: 183 selected endometrial cancer patients of stage 2 who were treated with surgery in our hospital from March 2009 to March 2010 w...

The amount of time patients spend in hospital preparing for and recovering from elective surgery has reduced significantly in recent years. Nursing interventions associated with lengthy hospital admissions are no longer appropriate for patients who may only stay in hospital for hours rather than days, and therefore psychological and educational interventions are becoming more important. This ar...

RAli 1991;303:1257-8 Admission arrangements for elective surgery often seem archaic and out of step with the public's experience of services outside the National Health Service. In a consumer oriented NHS it would clearly be preferable to offer most patients a mutually agreeable date for admission. We consider here the place of booked admission systems within the NHS and discuss surgeons' own e...