Hospital workload

Hospitals were asked to supply the number of elective and emergency aneurysm repairs performed in the financial year 2002/03. The data for endovascular procedures are considered
in a separate chapter.

>> Numbers of elective open operations

The figures for elective surgery for different sized units are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Number of elective open repairs performed in year 2002/03 by size of unit n=181

As expected, larger units had a bigger workload. However the numbers of operations performed at some hospitals appears remarkably small. Six large units reported performing 10 or fewer elective AAA repairs in 2002/03, and 29 intermediate hospitals reported performing 10 or fewer (fewer than one a month). All but one of 15 remote units reported performing 10 or fewer procedures. In total 31% (49/158) of hospitals performed 10 or fewer elective open AAA repairs in the 12 month period. It must be remembered that this is the total for the whole institution. Individual surgeons and anaesthetists will have done fewer cases in the year than this.