Inpatient Versus Outpatient Arthroplasty: A Single-Surgeon, Matched Cohort Analysis of 90-Day Complications

Background: Although some prior work supports the safety of same-day arthroplasty performed in a hospital, concerns remain when these procedures are performed in a free-standing ambulatory surgery center. The purpose of this study is to compare 90-day complication rates between matched cohorts that underwent inpatient vs outpatient arthroplasty at an ambulatory surgery center. Methods: A single-surgeon cohort of 243 consecutive patients who underwent outpatient arthroplasty was matched with 243 inpatients who had the same procedure. One-to-one nearest-neighbor matching with respect to gender, age, American Society of Anesthesiologists Score, and body mass index was utilized. The 486 primary arthroplasties included 178 unicondylar knees (36.6%), 146 total hips (30.0%), 92 total knees (18.9%), and 70 hip resurfacings (14.5%). Ninety-day outcomes including reoperation, readmission, unplanned clinic or emergency department visits, and major and minor complications were compared using a 2-sample proportions test. Results: The 2 cohorts were similar in distribution of demographic variables, demonstrating successful matching. The inpatient and outpatient cohorts both had readmission rates of 2.1% (P = 1.0). With the number of subjects studied, there were no statistically significant differences in rates of major complications (2.1% vs 2.5%, P = 1.0), minor complications (7.0% vs 7.8%, P = .86), reoperations (0.4% vs 2.1%, P = .22), emergency department visits (1.6% vs 2.5%, P = .52), or unplanned clinic visits (3.3% vs 5.8%, P = .19). Conclusion: This study suggests that arthroplasty procedures can be performed safely in an ambulatory surgery center among appropriately selected patients without an increased risk of complications. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.