General anesthesia in an office-based plastic surgical facility: a report on more than 23,000 consecutive...

The popularity of elective office-based plastic surgery has increased significantly over the past two decades. The continuing demand for improved aesthetic results has stimulated the development of ever more complex plastic surgical techniques. These techniques may require extended periods of operative time spent under anesthesia. Patients have come to expect an almost perfect anesthetic and surgical experience, with safety and comfort being their foremost concerns. Because of increasingly complex and lengthy operations, the authors believe that intravenous sedation, used for many years in their plastic surgery practice, is now suboptimal for most longer and complex surgical procedures. In their experience, under most circumstances, general anesthesia provides the optimal anesthetic experience for the patient, anesthesiologist, and surgeon. The authors present a consecutive 18-year study of general anesthesia in more than 23,000 procedures in an accredited, office-based plastic surgical facility that offers a very safe and uniformly pleasant anesthesia experience for patients. There were no intraoperative or postoperative deaths and no significant complications. The authors' experience differs from the common perception that general anesthesia is too risky for aesthetic surgery procedures.