Outpatient laparoscopic cholecystectomy: A new gold standard for cholecystectomy?
Objective: to contribute our experience for five years in the implemetation of outpatient laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC). Patients: between January 1999 and March 2004 we performed 504 outpatient LCs. We applied both exclusion and inclusion criteria, an anesthetic and surgical protocol, and discharge-specific criteria. Postoperative management in "fast track" regime. Postoperative period controlled by protocol, including phone calls after cholecystectomy. Results: the ambulatory percentage in the global series was 88.8%, and mean hospital stay was 6.1 hours. Fifty-one patients required overnight stays (10.1%), most of them for "social" causes. Five patients required admission (between 24 and 48 hours) for different causes (conversion to laparotomy, intraoperative neumothorax, and postoperative medical complications). Six patients (1.1%) were readmitted, and we observed 11.6% postoperative complications in the global series, with abdominal parietal pain being most frequent. Phone localization by 22.00 p.m. in the same day of surgery was 100% complete for outpatient cases. Postoperative surveillance within the first month after surgery was completed in 93.9%, and within th first year in 86.7% of patients. Conclusions: outpatient LC is safe and feasible, and probably represents a new "gold standard" in the treatment of symptomatic cholelithiasis.
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Digital revista |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Sociedad Española de Patología Digestiva
2006
|
| Online Access: | http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1130-01082006000100003 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|