[What do patients think about anesthesia? Survey on postoperative satisfaction in ambulatory surgery comparing...

To conduct a telephone survey to determine the degree of patient satisfaction with the anesthetic technique applied during outpatient arthroscopic surgery on the knee.

We recorded refusals to respond to the survey and the reasons. The patients were distributed randomly in 3 groups to receive 1) general anesthesia with propofol and remifentanil by continuous intravenous infusion at rates of 2 and 0.2-0.4 microgram/Kg/h, respectively; 2) subarachnoid anesthesia with lidocaine, and 3) subarachnoid anesthesia with 1.5% prilocaine. The second and third group received fixed doses of 3 mL of the local anesthetic. All patients were telephoned 48 hours after surgery and asked to answer 8 questions concerning prior experience of anesthesia, degree of satisfaction with the type of anesthesia used, postoperative pain, quality of information received about the anesthetic procedure, and undesirable side effects.

We interviewed 120 patients and 32 refused to participate. All patients in the general anesthesia group would accept the same anesthetic technique again in future operations, whereas 85% and 82% in the lidocaine and prilocaine groups, respectively, would accept the same technique (p = 0.026). Satisfaction with anesthesia, postoperative pain, and quality of information about the anesthetic procedure was similar in all 3 groups. No important undesirable side affects were reported in any of the groups.

The overall satisfaction with various types of anesthesia is similar among outpatients undergoing arthroscopic surgery on the knee; therefore, patient preferences for one technique over another should be taken into more consideration.