Surgery
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Although duration of hospital stay commonly is used as a surrogate outcome for surgical recovery, it is not applicable in the setting of short-stay surgery (<24 hours). The objective of our study was to describe the trajectory of recovery after short-stay abdominal surgery by using measures of physical activity and health-related quality of life (HRQL) and identify predictors of prolonged, postdischarge recovery. ⋯ Despite uniformly early discharge, a substantial proportion of patients (∼33%) had suboptimal recovery 2 months after short-stay surgery. Measures of physical activity and HRQOL provide complementary information and reflect the variability in trajectories of recovery after surgery.