Introduction:

Suspension of the surgical intervention is a situation that causes inconveniences, goes against optimizing activities, reducing costs, avoiding loss of materials and developing the work with the highest quality.

Objective:

To describe the main causes for the suspension of elective surgery for eligible patients.

Methods:

A cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out at Dr. Juan Bruno Zayas Alfonso General Teaching Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, in the period from September 2017 to September 2018. From a population of 4511 announced surgeries, a sample of 1289 patients was taken, who were interrupted for surgery during the anesthesia consultation and in the immediate preoperative period.

Results:

The specialty of general surgery presents the highest indicator (26.9%) of the total number of suspensions during consultation; thus, of the 798 suspensions during consultation, 476 (59.6%) were due to patients, and 341 were due to medical causes (42.7%), that is, more than half of the suspensions owed to clinical alterations. The hospital was attributed 386 suspensions, accounting for 29.9% of the total.

Conclusions:

The incidence of anesthetic-surgical suspensions is high both during anesthesiology consultation and in the immediate preoperative period. These, together with the causes related to the patient, constitute the most relevant medical-assistance practical experience and must be taken into consideration by the acting anesthesiologist, mainly in the presence of patients suffering from cardiovascular comorbidities.

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