Objective: To identify preoperative patient and surgical parameters that predict operative time variability within tympanoplasty current procedural terminology (CPT) codes.
Study design: Retrospective.
Setting: Tertiary referral center.
Patients: One hundred twenty eight patients who underwent tympanoplasty (CPT code 69631) or tympanoplasty with ossicular chain reconstruction (69633) by a single surgeon over 3 years.
Interventions: Procedures were preoperatively assigned a complexity modifier: Level 1 (small or posterior perforation able to be repaired via transcanal approach), Level 2 (large perforation or other factor requiring postauricular approach), or Level 3 (cholesteatoma or severe infection).
Main outcome measures: Total in-room time (nonoperative time plus actual operative time).
Results: Consideration of preoperative parameters including surgical complexity, surgical facility, use of facial nerve monitoring, laser usage, resident involvement, revision surgery, and underlying patient characteristics (American Society of Anesthesiologists [ASA] score, body mass index [BMI]) accounted for up to 69% of surgical time variance. Across both CPT codes, surgical complexity levels accurately stratified operative times (p < 0.05). Total time was longer (by 30.0 min for 69631, 55.4 min for 69633) in Level 3 procedures compared with Level 2, while Level 1 cases were shorter (27.6, 33.9 min). Resident involvement added 25 and 32 minutes to total time (p < 0.02). Nonoperative preparation times were longer (22.1, 15.4 min) in the main hospital compared with ambulatory surgical center (p < 0.001).
Conclusions: There is significant surgical time variability within tympanoplasty CPT codes, which can be accurately predicted by the preoperative assignment of complexity level modifiers and consideration of patient and surgical factors. Application of complexity modifiers can enable more efficient surgical scheduling.
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