AUDIO SUMMARY
Clinical audit of nonoperative anaesthesia time and surgical site infections of canine tibial plateau osteotomy procedures
Amy Mann, prospective VMD1*
Ciara Barr, VMD DACVAA1
1 University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, United States
* Corresponding author email: mannamy@upenn.edu
Published: 28 May 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18849/ve.v10i2.706
In this Audio Summary, Amy Mann shares the findings of a clinical audit conducted alongside Ciara Barr, which investigated how to reduce nonoperative anaesthesia time for canine tibial plateau osteotomy (TPLO) procedures. Read the full Clinical Audit here.
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Audio Summary Transcript
This clinical audit investigated how to reduce nonoperative anaesthesia time for tibial plateau osteotomy or TPLO procedures. We sought to reduce nonoperative anaesthesia time as it is non-value-added time that can increase a patient’s risk for perianaesthetic complications. TPLOs were chosen as they are one of the most frequent, yet time-consuming procedures performed at our institution.
The data collected from the initial audit found that nonoperative anaesthesia time counted for roughly half of total anaesthesia time at 131 minutes, while surgical site infection rate was 8.3% for TPLO procedures. After trialling a new communication protocol among patient care teams, the re-audit found that nonoperative anaesthesia time was reduced to 109 minutes, and surgical site infection rate was 6.3%.
The communication protocol trial during the re-audit is still in practice. This audit can be applied to other practices looking to better analyse their anaesthetic time variables, and to re-evaluate communication procedures for better patient outcomes.
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