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February 10, 2012
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Outpatient Surgery

Medical Author:
Lynnus Peng, MD
Coauthor:
Edward J Norris, MD, MBA
Medical Editor:
Scott H Plantz, MD, FAAEM
Medical Editor:
Francisco Talavera, PharmD, PhD
Medical Editor:
Anthony Anker, MD, FAAEM

Outpatient Surgery Introduction

Outpatient surgery allows a person to return home on the same day that a surgical procedure is performed. Outpatient surgery is also referred to as ambulatory surgery or same-day surgery.

  • Outpatient surgery eliminates inpatient hospital admission, reduces the amount of medication prescribed, and uses a doctor's time more efficiently. More procedures are now being performed in a surgeon's office, termed office-based surgery, rather than in an operating room.

  • Outpatient surgery is suited best for healthy people undergoing minor or intermediate procedures (limited urologic, ophthalmologic, or ear, nose, and throat procedures and procedures involving the extremities). Recently, people with more complex medical problems are undergoing outpatient surgery, and the types and complexity of surgical procedures have expanded significantly.

  • More than 60% of elective surgery procedures in the United States are currently performed as outpatient surgeries. Health experts expect this percentage will increase to nearly 75% over the next decade.

  • Outpatient surgery has developed over the past 3 decades for a number of reasons, including the following:
     
    • Improved surgical instruments

    • Less invasive surgical techniques

    • A team approach in preparing a person for surgery and home recovery that involves both a surgeon and an anesthesiologist (a medical doctor who specializes in administering anesthesia medications so the patient feels no pain and does not remember the surgery)

    • The desire to reduce health care costs

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Outpatient Surgery

Laparoscopy »

Laparoscopy Overview

Laparoscopy is a way of performing a surgery. Instead of making a large incision (or cut) for certain operations, surgeons make tiny incisions and insert tiny instruments and a camera into a site, such as into the abdomen, to view the internal organs and repair or remove tissue.

Laparoscopy was first performed in animals in the early 1900s, and the Swedish surgeon Jacobaeus coined the term laparoscopy (laparothorakoskopie) in 1901. However, better techniques were not developed until the 1960s, when laparoscopy was accepted as a safe and valuable procedure.

Early on, the technique of laparoscopy, sometimes referred to as keyhole surgery, was used only to diagnose conditions. Then doctors began to perform surgeries such as tubal sterilization in women using laparoscopy. The technique has evolved so much that operations that once required doctors to make a very large incision, such as to remove the gallbladder, can now all be ...

Read the Laparoscopy article »


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