[Day Surgery. An opportunity for postgraduate surgeons' training]

It is widely acknowledged that day surgical procedures must be performed by expert personnel or carried out under their supervision. Recent regulations introduced by Schools of Postgraduate Surgery oblige postgraduate surgeons to carry out a number of minor and medium-sized operations. The characteristics of day surgery make it an appropriate organisational model for complying with the requirements of these directives. Interventional research has shown that adequate training permits education to be coupled with good results.

The postgraduate surgeons are trained to perform hernioplasty using Trabucco's method through surgical training based on an initial phase of at least 20 operated patients during which they act as the second surgeon, and a phase of 10 patients during which they are the first surgeon working alongside a tutor with proven experience. Five doctors are completing their training, having acted as first surgeon assisted by a tutor during the period 01/11/1999 - 31/10/00 in 60 hernioplasty operations using Trabucco's method out of a total of 143 carried out in the same period, with an average of 12 operations each. Specific informed consent was obtained from all patients. All operations were performed under local anesthesia.

There was no need to convert to general anesthesia. Complications were comparable to those occurring during surgery performed by experienced colleagues. No recurrences were reported. The mean follow-up was 10 months.

An evaluation of these data confirms the real possibility of dedicating a number of ambulatory surgical procedures to training postgraduate surgeons. This would not lead to a reduced efficacy of treatment and does not increase the percentage of complications.