Day surgery: results after restructuration of a university public general surgery unit

Seance of wednesday 11 january 2012 (LA CHIRURGIE DANS L’HÔPITAL DE DEMAIN)

Abstract

Nowadays, in France, development of the ambulatory surgery has stalled. This is probably related to the fact that ambulatory surgery is restricted by the law to the “day-surgery” in 12 hours, and only 17 procedures are referenced for this surgery. Thus, conventional hospitalization remained the rule after surgery. In January 2010, our university general surgery unit was restructured. It evolved from a conventional unit to a predominantly ambulatory unit. Otherwise, our unit adjoins a hotel, even inside our institution, which accommodates patients, patient visitors and tourists.The aim of this study was to compare the postoperative accommodation modalities between two groups of patients. The first group consisted of patients admitted before January 2010, at the time of conventional activity, whereas the second group consisted of patients admitted after January 2010 in a restructured unit.Our results show that it is clearly possible to distinguish the need for care of the need for accommodation and significantly reduce postoperative conventional accommodation. They also raise the question of extending the legal period of 12 hours to 24 hours in order to expand the list of the referenced procedures.