• A D Kane, J Soar, R A Armstrong, E Kursumovic, M T Davies, F C Oglesby, L Cortes, C Taylor, I K Moppett, S Agarwal, J Cordingley, J Dorey, S J Finney, G Kunst, D N Lucas, G Nickols, R Mouton, J P Nolan, B Patel, V J Pappachan, F Plaat, B R Scholefield, J H Smith, L Varney, T M Cook, and collaborators.
• Royal College of Anaesthetists, Red Lion Square, UK.
• Anaesthesia. 2023 Jun 1; 78 (6): 701711701-711.

AbstractDetailed contemporary knowledge of the characteristics of the surgical population, national anaesthetic workload, anaesthetic techniques and behaviours are essential to monitor productivity, inform policy and direct research themes. Every 3-4 years, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, as part of its National Audit Projects (NAP), performs a snapshot activity survey in all UK hospitals delivering anaesthesia, collecting patient-level encounter data from all cases under the care of an anaesthetist. During November 2021, as part of NAP7, anaesthetists recorded details of all cases undertaken over 4 days at their site through an online survey capturing anonymous patient characteristics and anaesthetic details. Of 416 hospital sites invited to participate, 352 (85%) completed the activity survey. From these, 24,177 reports were returned, of which 24,172 (99%) were included in the final dataset. The work patterns by day of the week, time of day and surgical specialty were similar to previous NAP activity surveys. However, in non-obstetric patients, between NAP5 (2013) and NAP7 (2021) activity surveys, the estimated median age of patients increased by 2.3 years from median (IQR) of 50.5 (28.4-69.1) to 52.8 (32.1-69.2) years. The median (IQR) BMI increased from 24.9 (21.5-29.5) to 26.7 (22.3-31.7) kg.m-2 . The proportion of patients who scored as ASA physical status 1 decreased from 37% in NAP5 to 24% in NAP7. The use of total intravenous anaesthesia increased from 8% of general anaesthesia cases to 26% between NAP5 and NAP7. Some changes may reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the anaesthetic population, though patients with confirmed COVID-19 accounted for only 149 (1%) cases. These data show a rising burden of age, obesity and comorbidity in patients requiring anaesthesia care, likely to impact UK peri-operative services significantly.© 2023 The Authors. Anaesthesia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association of Anaesthetists.

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