• Matthew William Vanneman, Melan Thuraiappah, Igor Feinstein, Vikram Fielding-Singh, Ashley Peterson, Scott Kronenberg, Martin S Angst, and Nima Aghaeepour.
• Division of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Anesthesia, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif. Electronic address: mwvanneman@stanford.edu.
• J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. 2024 Aug 1; 168 (2): 559568.e6559-568.e6.

BackgroundDecreasing variability in time-intensive tasks during cardiac surgery may reduce total procedural time, lower costs, reduce clinician burnout, and improve patient access. The relative contribution and variability of surgeon control time (SCT) and anesthesia control time (ACT) to total procedural time is unknown.MethodsA total of 669 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery were enrolled. Using linear regression, we estimated adjusted SCTs and ACTs, controlling for patient and procedural covariates. The primary endpoint compared overall SCTs and ACTs. The secondary endpoint compared the variability in adjusted SCTs and ACTs. Sensitivity analyses quantified the relative importance of the specific surgeon and anesthesiologist in the adjusted linear models.ResultsThe median SCT was 4.1 hours (interquartile range [IQR], 3.4-4.9 hours) compared to a median ACT of 1.0 hours (IQR, 0.8-1.2 hours; P < .001). Using linear regression, the variability in adjusted SCT among surgeons (range, 1.8 hours) was 3.5-fold greater than the variability in adjusted ACT among anesthesiologists (range, 0.5 hour; P < .001). The specific surgeon and anesthesiologist accounted for 50% of the explanatory power of the predictive model (P < .001).ConclusionsSCT variability is significantly greater than ACT variability and is strongly associated with the surgeon performing the procedure. Although these results suggest that SCT variability is an attractive operational target, further studies are needed to determine practitioner specific and modifiable attributes to reduce variability and improve efficiency.Copyright © 2023 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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