Description of Cancer Surgery Data

The cancer wait time data includes cases where the surgeon identifies the surgery as being performed for diagnosis or treatment of cancer or suspected cancer.

The data is from Saskatchewan’s Surgical Patient Registry and includes only procedures performed in hospital operating rooms.

The cancer wait time cases are a subset of the total reported surgical cases. Cancer cases are also included in other wait time data posted on the web site.

Many procedures are performed to diagnose and treat cancers. Some of these, such as prostatectomies and resections of the bowel, colon or rectum, are major procedures always performed in an operating room and fully reported to the Registry. Others, including many types of biopsies, are minor procedures that are normally done in other settings like ambulatory care or endoscopy procedure rooms and are not reported to the Registry. There is some regional variation in the availability and use of operating rooms and other types of procedure rooms. About 8% of all surgeries performed in operating rooms are cancer surgeries.

All operating room procedures that surgeons have identified as cancer surgery are included in the summary cancer table showing “Surgery for Cancer or Suspected Cancer by Regional Health Authority.” Separate tables are provided showing wait times for some common cancer surgeries.

No wait times are shown when there are fewer than 20 procedures done in a region in the six-month period.

Some Factors Affecting Wait Times for Surgery

Many factors can affect wait times for cancer surgery. Some of these factors are system-related and some are patient-related. Delays that are related to patient choice or readiness for surgery should be excluded from the calculation of waiting times, but it is not always possible to do so.

	Patients sometimes specify that they are not going to be available for surgery for a period of time due to a commitment or event, such as harvest or a wedding, or refuse to accept an offered date specifying later availability. Time that a patient is unavailable for surgery is documented and reported to the Registry. This time is excluded when waiting times are calculated.
	Sometimes a procedure that is scheduled to be performed on a specific date is later postponed. Postponements can occur for a variety of reasons, some of which are health system related (e.g. no bed is available) and others patient related (e.g. the patient does not show up or the surgery can’t be performed because the patient is not clinically ready for surgery on the scheduled date). Currently, all cases involving postponements are included in counts of surgery performed, regardless of the reason for the postponement, and no adjustments are made to account for postponements when calculating wait times.