Surgical Carbon Footprint Studies from 2023–2025 Systematic Review

A systematic review of 26 studies published between 2023 and 2025 on the carbon footprint of surgical care. The dataset, compiled by Anna Savio, includes extracted data on study scope, system boundaries, reported emission values, carbon hotspots, and mitigation strategies. Reported emissions range from under 5 kgCO₂e for minor procedures to over 1,000 kgCO₂e for multistage patient pathways.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking carbon emissions across different surgical procedures based on reported emission values.
• Identifying key emission hotspots in surgical settings based on the extracted data on consumables and energy.
• Analyzing methodological heterogeneity in life-cycle assessments of surgery based on the review of study scopes and boundaries.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of proposed mitigation strategies for reducing surgical greenhouse gas emissions.

Strengths

• Includes data from 26 peer-reviewed studies, providing a structured overview of recent literature.
• Conducted a structured quality assessment to evaluate the reliability of included studies.
• Reports a wide range of emission values, from under 5 kgCO₂e to over 1,000 kgCO₂e, illustrating the scope of impact.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is small (13.5 KB), indicating limited scope, likely containing summary or extracted metadata rather than raw study data.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Anna Savio.

Collection Method

Systematic review following PRISMA guidelines, searching PubMed, Scopus, and Healthcare LCA databases.

Time Range

Studies published from 2023 to 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-18 17:26:22; freshness should be verified.