July 10 (UPI) -- A recent study by University of Ottawa found delays in emergency surgery were linked to a higher risk of death for patients in the hospital.
The delays are often due to a lack of operating rooms, staff and other system issues according to the study published July 10 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
"Delays in emergency surgeries are a problem around the world," Dr. Alan Forster, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, said in a press release.
"This study adds to the evidence suggesting timely access to the [operating room] is important from both the patient and care provider perspectives. Given that there are no universal standards for the time frame a patient with urgent needs should get into surgery, we set an aggressive scale for the different grades of urgency."
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Researchers analyzed 15,160 emergency surgery patients at The Ottawa Hospital and found that nearly 19 percent did not have surgery within the time frame based on the different grades of urgency.
Reasons for delays included staffing and operating room availability.
"We found that most delays were due to system issues, like physician, nurse and operating room unavailability," Dr. Daniel McIsaac, an associate scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, said.
"Improving personnel availability may improve access without increasing costs [at least from a hospital perspective]. Furthermore, the increased resources required to have adequate nursing personnel and physical resources should be partially offset by decreased hospital costs independently attributed to surgical delay."
