Sustainable Operating Rooms: A Comprehensive Framework for Environmental Impact Analysis

The healthcare sector is responsible for around 4.4 % of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, according to estimates. Operating rooms are responsible for the greatest rate of resource consumption and overall hospital waste, varying from 20 % to 33 %. Hence, it is essential to fully discover the environmental impact of surgical procedures to obtain insight into the total emissions associated with the healthcare sector. Moreover, the lack of uniformity in data collection and the discrepancy of the data used by researchers makes it challenging, if not ineffective, to conduct a rigorous scientific comparison among the currently available studies on the environmental impacts of surgical procedures. This study aims to provide a practical and standardised framework that can be utilised to evaluate, simply and consistently, the environmental impacts of surgical procedures. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to assess the state of the art in environmental impact analyses related to surgical practices. This review highlighted significant variability and heterogeneity in existing methodologies, serving as the foundation for developing a more consistent approach. By simulating three different scenarios based on data availability, a methodology is proposed to conduct an environmental impact analysis tailored to the specific needs of researchers. Adopting a uniform methodology guarantees the inclusion of important variables and factors, preventing any oversights in the evaluation of the entire process.