[Cost/benefit of preoperative examinations for routine elective surgery].

Introduction: Preoperative exams are a common practice for surgeons; however, their use is not based on a scientific or medical basis. In the best of scenarios, it is an institutional policy.

Material And Methods: We wanted to determine the utility and cost-effectiveness ratio of of preoperative routine tests (PRT) and we analyzed retrospectively the frequency of complications, hospital stay, and cost-effectiveness of PRT, in subjects with no concomitant disease, who were having elective surgery performed by the general surgery service.