Non-urgent surgeries are performed by appointment. Certain types of surgeries may necessitate longer waiting times. In this case patients are notified that they have been put on a waiting list. In urgent cases immediate intervention may be necessary.
A neurosurgeon and an anesthesiologist must check the patient before any surgery can take place.
Check-up before surgery:
Checkup before elective surgery (non-urgent) is done at the outpatient specialist clinic. Laboratory and imaging tests necessary for the intervention are done here.
The attending doctor or the anesthesiologist decide what laboratory tests are needed.
Patients may arrive for laboratory tests between 10 AM - 2 PM at the nurses’ station of the general neurosurgery ward on the first floor.
Patients are to arrive for imaging tests at the suites of the Radiology Clinic with the requisition form that they have received.
If the surgery is done under general anesthesia the anesthesiologist also needs to assess the patient, which can be done on workdays at the outpatient specialist clinic of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, for which a referral is issued at the outpatient specialist clinic.
The anesthesiologist may request additional tests and examinations, primarily to screen out heart and lung diseases, which may lengthen the period of pre-surgery screening.
Pre-operative checkups in case of emergency surgery are done during inpatient care.
Surgery schedule:
Elective surgeries are scheduled in the afternoon meeting of the doctors the day before they are to be performed. Pre-operative preparation of patients and checking of available documents the day after are based on this schedule. Finalization of the planned surgery schedule is completed in the morning taking into consideration the surgical needs of patients who have arrived during the night. Because of these additions it might happen that a surgery originally included in the schedule will need to be put off. The surgery schedule might be modified even during the day, if a patient with an urgent, life-threatening condition arrives. Necessary surgeries in urgent cases can be performed 0-24 h.
Patients can only be admitted to the operating theatre if they have full radiological documentation and a signed informed consent form.
Patients must be clean when entering the operating theatre. Therefore it is mandatory for the patient to clean up before surgery to ensure hygienic conditions. If the patient is not capable of it, the nursing staff will help, or bath, or clean up the patient. Sometimes hair must be shaved. This is done in the operating room.
An operation room assistant delivers the patient to and back from the operating theatre on a delivery bed.
In the operating theatre the theatre staff (doctors, scrub nurse, operating theatre assistants, scrub technician) take care of patients and perform the necessary intervention.