Ambulatory urologic surgery

Since November 1st, 1988, an outpatient clinic has been set up in our department of Urology. Patients come to the clinic on the morning of the procedure and leave in the evening after a few hours of monitoring. Eligibility for outpatient surgery is determined using strict social, surgical and medical criteria. A visit with the anesthesiologist is scheduled one week before the operation. On the day of the procedure, the patient arrives at 7 a.m., is shaved, prepared and operated on by a senior surgeon before impatient operations begin. Postoperative monitoring is carried out as usual and around 6 p.m. the surgeon and the anesthesiologist decide whether the patient can be discharged. Most patients are interviewed by telephone within one week of the procedure. From November 1988 through December 1989, 172 adults were admitted to the outpatient clinic for endoscopic surgery (85 cases), open surgery (42 cases) or other procedures including diagnostic investigations, instillations, and removal or replacement of stents (44 cases). Twenty-three patients were discharged only on the day following the procedure. One patient was readmitted for clotting in the bladder. These preliminary results show that, as compared to inpatient surgery, outpatient surgery is cost-saving, easier to cope with psychologically and less apt to be followed by nosocomial infection, without greater risk to the patient provided inclusion criteria are stringently applied.