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Researchers say appendectomy patients can safely head home after their laparoscopic surgery instead of staying overnight in the hospital. This finding, which was recently published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, is based on data that showed no difference in readmissions or post-operative complications between patients who are hospitalized and those who are released the same day.
For the study, researchers reviewed the medical records of 12,703 patients who had a laparoscopic appendectomy for non-perforated appendicitis between 2010 and 2014 at 14 Kaiser Permanente medical centers. Of those patients, 6,710 were discharged on the same day while 5,993 were hospitalized overnight. Same-day discharge patients experienced the same return rate to emergency rooms or urgent care as their hospitalized counterparts—at 2.2 percent. They also experienced a lower readmission rate within 30 days than those who were hospitalized at 3.1 percent.
According to Outpatient Surgery magazine, U.S. surgeons perform more than 250,000 appendectomies annually. Because of this study’s findings, more patients with non-perforated acute appendicitis are expected to be discharged the same day, resulting in an average savings of $348 for the procedure within the Kaiser Permanente system.
"Advances in early recognition and treatment of the disease process and minimally invasive techniques have allowed for some of the inflammatory response and the trauma from surgical treatment to be lessened and recovery to be faster; as a result, patients can get back to their lives much sooner," says Armen Aboulian, MD, FACS, the study’s principal investigator and a colorectal surgeon at Kaiser Permanente, Woodland Hills, Calif.
Currently, Aboulian says approximately 60 percent of non-perforated acute appendicitis patients at Kaiser Permanente are discharged the same day as their procedure.
"The goal of the study is not to rush the patients home, but rather, the importance of this study lies in the confirmation that discharge from the recovery room is safe and surgeons across the nation may consider it directly from the recovery room in the appropriate setting," says Dr. Aboulian.
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