ReviewAnaesthesia2022
The effect of overlapping surgical scheduling on operating theatre productivity: a narrative review.
Review in Anaesthesia, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Surgical efficiency, safety, and quality of life among four various approaches for T1 stage papillary thyroid carcinoma: a prospective cohort study.Surgical endoscopy · 2026Observational
- Remote robotic surgery: implementing a technology 20 years in the making.Surgical endoscopy · 2025Review
- Modelling the economic constraints and consequences of anaesthesia associate expansion in the UK National Health Service: a narrative review.British journal of anaesthesia · 2024Review
- A Comparison of Surgeon Estimated Times and Actual Operative Times in Pediatric Dental Rehabilitation under General Anesthesia. A Retrospective Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Getting operating theatre metrics right to underpin quality improvement: understanding limitations of NHS Model Hospital calculations.British journal of anaesthesia · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article reviews the background to overlapping surgery, in which a single senior surgeon operates across two parallel operating theatres; anaesthesia is induced and surgery commenced by junior surgeons in the second operating theatre while the lead surgeon completes the operation in the first. We assess whether there is any theoretical basis to expect increased productivity in terms of number of operations completed. A review of observational studies found that while there is a perception of increased surgical output for one surgeon, there is no evidence of increased productivity compared with two surgeons working in parallel. There is potential for overlapping surgery to have some positive impact in situations where turnover times between cases are long, operations are short (<2 h) and where 'critical portions' of surgery constitute about half of the total operation time. However, any advantages must be balanced against safety, ethical and training concerns.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.