• Seiji Kajiyama, Masako Kobayashi, and Yoshinori Okada.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Mazda Hospital, Hiroshima 730-8585.
• Masui. 2004 Aug 1;53(8):882-7.

BackgroundPostoperative care following ambulatory surgery is done at home. Therefore, it is important to establish qualitative clinical discharge criteria that can be used to determine when patients can go home safely for the care by friend or relative.MethodsThis study included 213 patients who had been managed by anesthesiologist in an ambulatory surgery unit. We compared the discharge times achieved by post-anesthesia discharge scoring system with the times that the patients were actually discharged from the ambulatory surgery unit.ResultsOn an average, patients who could be discharged safely on the same day required 161 minutes postoperatively to achieve a post-anesthesia discharge score of at least 9. The actual postoperative discharge time was 255 minutes. 53.6% of the patients who had been admitted could have obtained a post-anesthesia discharge score of at least 9, but they wanted to stay in hospital.ConclusionsA discharge scoring system is effective to determine the optimal length of stay in the ambulatory surgery unit and to achieve the prompt and safe discharge of patients. In order to popularize ambulatory surgery and reduce admission rate, it is necessary for us to make an effort to change patients' mind for ambulatory surgery.

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