Usefulness of routine preoperative testing in a developing country: a prospective study

INTRODUCTION: The assessment of anesthetic risks is an essential component of preoperative evaluation. In developing world, preanesthesia evaluation may be challenging because patient's medical history and records are scare, and language barrier limits physical examination. Our objective was to evaluate the impact of routine preoperative testing in a low-resources setting. METHODS: Prospective observational study performed in a French forward surgical unit in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 201 patients who were scheduled for non urgent surgery were screened with routine laboratory exams during preoperative evaluation. Changes in surgery were assessed (delayed or scheduled). RESULTS: Abnormal hemoglobin findings were reported in 35% of patients, abnormal WBC count in 11,1% of patients, abnormal platelets in 15,3% of patients. Positive HIV results were found in 8,3% of cases. Routine tests represented 43,6% of changes causes. CONCLUSION: Our study showed that in a developing country, routine preoperative tests showed abnormal results up to 35% of cases, and represented 43,5% of delayed surgery causes. The rate of tests leading to management changes varied widely, from 0% to 8,3%. These results suggested that selected tests would be useful to diagnose diseases that required treatment before non urgent surgery. However, larger studies are needeed to evaluate the cost/benefit ratio and the clinical impact of such a strategy.