More and more surgery is being performed as an outpatient.
Outpatient surgery has the following benefits:
Recovery may be quicker as operations are typically performed to minimize pain
Infection rates may be lower as surgery is not done in a major hospital but rather a surgery center
The staff get experienced in managing particular kinds of operations
It may work out cheaper
The types of operations performed as an outpatient include:
Anterior cervical fusion surgery
Artificial cervical disc surgery
Posterior cervical foraminotomies
Lumbar microdiscetomies and laminectomies
Typically surgery is performed in the morning and patients go home the same day and go home 4-23 hours later. Attention is a little more focused than in a major hospital with lower complications. The actual operating room setup and equipment is the same as a big hospital but the staff/patient ratios are better. Patients with good health are generally only selected for this kind of surgery.
