Electrocardiogram Ordering Practices among Anesthesiologists

Current preoperative testing practices in ambulatory surgery are widely disparate: a survey of CAS members

“…A large proportion of the respondents (44%) indicated that age alone is not a criterion for preoperative ECG while others applied a variety of age cut-points for the test. The most frequently used cut-point was age > 55 or 65 yr. McKinley et al 's survey (1996) shows a similar pattern of ECG ordering according to age with the most frequent cut-point at > 40 yr. 24 Their survey included 182 teaching hospitals and 270 non-teaching hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. The practice of ordering preoperative ECG at different age categories may explain the varied rates of ECG use amongst the hospitals in Ontario.…”