Important Patient Education on Preparing for Any Outpatient Surgery

6 Things You Should Know Before Your Next Outpatient Procedure

What you need to know and do to reduce the risks associated with any surgery

Photo by Hush Naidoo on Unsplash

With nearly 50 million outpatient surgeries performed in the U.S. each year and the increasingly complex nature of the procedures, patients need to know several important details when having surgery without an overnight stay in the hospital. Updated fasting restrictions, removing jewelry to reduce the risk of burns and asking about regional blocks for non-opioid pain control when undergoing anesthesia are a few important factors that could lead to increased satisfaction and safer outcomes.

“Complex procedures like total knee replacement, cardiology procedures and spine surgery used to be done almost exclusively in hospitals, but now we have the ability to do them in an outpatient setting, which can include ambulatory surgery centers or in the hospital,” said Mary Dale Peterson, M.D., MSHCA, FACHE, FASA, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). “These settings are less expensive and now reimbursed by Medicare. As a result, even more elderly patients are able to have outpatient surgery.”