A census of patients waiting for treatment or consultation in surgical specialties in an English health region.

A census of waiting lists in five surgical specialties within the Northern Region has been carried out. In addition to enumerating those patients waiting for inpatient treatment and outpatient consultation, the census characterized lists in terms of the age and sex structure of those waiting; the length of time people had waited; their district of residence and (for inpatients only) the numbers waiting for certain specified operations or procedures. Patients waiting for inpatient treatment were older, overall, than the general population and, within specialties, ophthalmology lists contained a higher proportion of the very elderly whilst ear, nose and throat surgery lists had a younger age-structure. Three-quarters of ophthalmology inpatient lists were made up of patients waiting for cataract surgery, 14 per cent of patients awaiting orthopaedic inpatient treatment were waiting for hip joint replacement and 32 per cent of gynaecology lists comprised women needing sterilization. These data on age-structure and case composition are broadly similar to recent work carried out by Yates's group who restricted their study to longer waiting lists in the West Midlands Region and Wales. When data in the present study were related to the population from which the cases arose, it was found that the prevalence of outpatient waiting was greater than inpatient waiting except for general surgery (where a higher proportion of the population was awaiting inpatient treatment) and in gynaecology (where outpatient and inpatient waiting was equally common).2+ Standardized waiting list ratios (SWLRs) have been calculated to allow comparisons between districts and specialties, free of distortions produced by differing age-structure of populations.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)