British journal of neurosurgery
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Utilization of operating theatre time is an important issue in neurosurgery, in a National Health Service Hospital. NHS Trusts are under ever increasing pressure to meet specified 'targets' in relation to admissions and operations. We performed a retrospective audit on the utilization of neurosurgical operating theatres at Royal Preston Hospital, analysed the times required for various common neurosurgical operations, and broke them down into clinical (operating and anaesthetic) and non-clinical times. ⋯ The mean time duration between the end of one surgical procedure and the beginning of the next was 101 minutes. It was found that actual operating time was surprisingly only 56% of the time available. These data could be used to schedule operating theatre sessions for neurosurgery in the UK, as we believe our practice to be representative of a majority of units in the country.