An Updated Overview of Anesthesia for Ambulatory Orthopaedic Surgery

Outpatient orthopaedic surgery necessitates unique requirements from anesthesia to optimize institutional operations, patient safety, and outcomes. Anesthesia involvement spans the entirety of the patient's perioperative experience, which is split into three phases: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative. A thorough anesthesia-specific workup is crucial to patient selection and creation of an anesthetic plan. The anesthetic interventions intraoperatively are varied and selected specifically for each patient. Recovery from anesthesia is guided by evidence-based criteria, followed by discharge education and a final assessment from an anesthesia provider. The future of orthopaedic surgery continues to trend toward ambulatory surgery, and anesthesia is adapting appropriately.