The costs and quality of operative training for residents in tympanoplasty type I.

Conclusion: A teaching hospital would incur more operation room costs on training surgical residents.

Objective: To evaluate the increased operation time and the increased operation room costs of operations performed by surgical residents. As a model we used a very common surgical otology procedure -- tympanoplasty type I.

Subjects And Methods: From January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2004, we included in this study 100 patients who received tympanoplasty type I in Taipei Veterans General Hospital. Fifty-six procedures were performed by a single board-certified surgeon and 44 procedures were performed by residents. We analyzed the operation time and surgical outcomes in these two groups of patients. The operation room cost per minute was obtained by dividing the total operation room expenses by total operation time in the year 2004.

Results: The average operation time of residents was 116.47 min, which was significantly longer (p<0.0001) than that of the board-certified surgeon (average 81.07 min). It cost USD $40.36 more for each operation performed by residents in terms of operation room costs. The surgical success rate of residents was 81.82%, which was significantly lower (p=0.016) than that of the board-certified surgeon (96.43%).