Causes of Surgery Cancellation in Iran: A Systematic Review

Cancellation of surgical procedures is one of the biggest challenges in hospitals throughout the world and it is important as it increases patient's stress, expenses and wastage of time, and prolongs the duration of hospitalization of patients. The aim of this study was to review literature related to reasons of surgery cancellation in Iran.
This systematic review was conducted from March to Sep. 2014. The keywords including cancellation, delay, postpone, cancelled surgery, surgery operation and Iran were searched in international search engines including Pubmed, Scopus, ProQust and Google scholar and Persian indexing websites of SID, Magiran and Iranmedex. All articles related to cancelled operations in Iran, written in English or Persian (from Jan 1, 2004 until Sep 31, 2014) were collected. Then, those articles which contained any of the selected keywords in their titles or abstracts were compiled, and others were excluded. At last, a check list including title of article, time and location of study, sample size and location and cancellation cause was designed for final assessment.
A total of 646 records were found in 7 selected databases of which 13 articles met the criteria for inclusion in this study. The main cases of surgery cancellation were related to operating room and hospital, anesthesia, patient's non-clinical problems, the surgeon and clinical problems.
Adoption of strategies for on-time initiation of surgical procedures, identification of patient's underlying problems and the appropriate process of hospital admission can be effective in reducing the rate of cancelled operations.