Variability in the surgical management of carpal tunnel syndrome: implications for the effective use of healthcare resources.

Medicine has been said to be as much art as science, where physicians invoke their individual skills and judgment to address the unique aspects of each presenting patient. Yet to what extent should physicians exercise their own discretion in determining the use rates of hospital resources? This article examines the results of a study on surgeon use of surgical setting and anesthetic technique for carpal tunnel release (CTR) surgery - a simple, low-risk surgical procedure that can be performed in either a formal operating room or a minor surgical setting, using local, regional or general anesthetic. The selected combination of surgical setting and anesthetic technique employed by a surgeon has not been standardized and can significantly impact both patient outcomes and administrative healthcare costs for hospital resources, equipment and pharmaceuticals. While a certain amount of variability in surgical management is necessary to allow clinicians to practise their "art," policy makers have an opportunity to standardize some surgeon practices to control costs, particularly when those practices are found to be as strongly influenced by the subjective attitudes of individual surgeons as by evidence-based science and economics.