A Statistical Analysis of Preanesthetic Consultation in the Pediatric Patient

Oh, Ah Young; Ahn, Won Sik; Park, Chong Doo; Kim, Chong Sung; Kim, Seong Deok; Lee, Jun Gul

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Adequate pre-anesthetic evaluation could improve both patient outcome and hospital management by reducing the rates of operation delay and cancellation. We undertook this study to contribute to the establishment of a pre-anesthetic evaluation system by studying pediatric patients who had preoperatively consulted the anesthesiology department.
METHODS
Data were collected using the EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system. 260 pediatric patients, age limitation 15 years, who had consulted our anesthesiology staff, were enrolled. The age distributions, departments consulted and clinical causes were analyzed.
RESULTS
The age distributions were as follow; <1 month: 1.5%, 1 month-1 year: 29.2%, 1-4 years: 23.8%, 5-7 years: 18.1% and 8-15 years: 27.3%. The causes of the consultations were mainly pulmonary (27.3%), cardiovascular (21.9%), gastrointestinal (12.3%), airway (9.6%) problems and other causes (26.5%). The most common diseases were congenital heart disease, prematurity and URI. The major departments consulted were general surgery (16.2%), ophthalmology (15.4%), thoracic surgery (15.0%), plastic surgery (15.0%) and orthopedic surgery (14.6%).
CONCLUSIONS
The establishment of a communication system with surgeons concerning patient management guidelines about the common causes of consultations would improve hospital management by reducing the incidences of delay and the cancellation of operations.