Table 2. Bivariate Spearman correlations between surgical rate and five a priori country-level variables and Spearman partial correlations adjusting for total health expenditure.

Variable	Spearman correlation	P	Spearman partial correlation	P
Total health expenditure per capita	0.87297	< 0.0001	NA	NA
Life expectancy	0.77536	< 0.0001	−0.06327	0.6166
GDP	0.81359	< 0.0001	−0.24295	0.0512
Urban population	0.69607	< 0.0001	0.00659	0.9585
Population size	−0.18869	0.1292	−0.11665	0.3548

GDP: gross domestic product; NA: not applicable.