Ambulatory surgery in urology: first numbers of a successful program.

Abstract

The ambulatory surgery includes those surgical procedures that require a small period of post-operative recovery so that the patients will be discharged from the hospital in the same day of the surgical intervention. In Urology, the vast amount of pathology that allows the cure with medium and low complexity surgical procedures makes this specialty a privileged one in which ambulatory surgery is concerned. In this paper the authors propose to describe how their Urology group works in the ambulatory field. 472 patients where reviewed in an evaluation period from January 2006 to April 2008. The medical appointment protocol is summarized as well as the most common surgical procedures and complications. Annually we operate an average of 200 ambulatory patients and this represents about 22% of the hole surgical activity of the Urology group. The majority of the surgeries are circumcisions and vasectomies (always associated with other small procedures). There is a 5 hours weakly period where a total of 5 to 6 patients are operated. Surgical complications represented 1.6% of total procedures, all of them late ones. With this specific ambulatory program our service managed to reduce drastically the waiting time for this kind of procedures (now-a-days is about 3-4 weeks), with a satisfaction rate of about 95%. According to the great outcomes, low complications rate and great acceptance of the patients, the development of this unit is without doubt a winning project in patients care.