Background:Operation Theatre Time (OR Time) is very precious and its management requires to be streamlined to prevent loss of revenue to the hospital and at the same time providing better services to the patient without causing delay in operations. It is much more pertinent to neurosurgical operation theatre where the operations are usually prolonged.

Methods:100 cases of both cranial and spinal surgeries were enrolled, to study the factors and timings which are affecting the OR time in our institute. The following times were recorded:Anaesthesiatime,position time,draping time,surgery time,reposition time,reversal time,total time, clinical time and non–clinical time and analysed by appropriate statistics.

Results:The OR time can to be considered as clinical time and non–clinical time. In our study the clinical time for cranial surgery was 254.95±69.55 and for spinal surgery it was 141.40±44.32. Non clinical time for cranial surgeries is 70.16 ±24.85 and for spinal surgeries 57.27±11.91.There is statistically significant difference in nonclinical time for cranial surgeries and longer in our institute compared to spinal surgeries (p <0.05). Anesthesia time is significantly more for cranial surgeries (22.29 ±11.50) compared to spinal surgeries (14.87±9.70) (p <0.05). The patient positioning time in cranial surgeries ( 16.35±9.15)  is significantly more compared to spinal surgeries (10.14±7.72).The patient repositioning time after surgery is statistically significant and more in surgeries performed in prone position compared to surgeries performed in supine positions (5.93 ±4.62),whereas the patient  positioning time not significant (p <0.05).

Conclusions:Our institute being a teaching university for both surgeons and anaesthetists, as well as for nurses, the time intervals of OR time utilization concerning the most of major neuroasurgical surgeries were within acceptable limits, being comparable to the time estimates of other studies.