Timely cholecystectomy: important factors to improve guideline adherence and patient treatment.

As possible reasons for non-adherence, medical factors such as advanced age, multimorbidity and frailty could be identified. Analyses of structural factors revealed that hospitals in very rural regions are less likely to perform timely cholecystectomies, presumably due to infrastructural and personnel-capacity bottlenecks. A similar picture emerges for maximum-care hospitals, which might be explained by more severe and complex cases on average. Further evaluation indicates that an increase in and better hospital-internal participation of gastroenterologists in remuneration could lead to even greater adherence to the S3 IIIC.6 guideline.