Outpatient vaginal hysterectomy: optimizing perioperative management for same-day discharge

To present tactics for optimizing outpatient vaginal hysterectomy and describe perioperative outcomes in a large consecutive case series.

This is a descriptive study and review of clinical outcomes in 1,071 patients selected to undergo vaginal hysterectomy for benign indications from 2000 to 2010. The setting is a single-surgeon private practice in a community hospital. Outcome measures include length of hospital stay, estimated blood loss, operative time, uterine weight, and perioperative complications, including hospital readmissions and emergency room visits.

One thousand seventy-one of 1,162 cases (92%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 90.5-93.7) were total vaginal hysterectomies, of which 1,029 (96%, 95% CI 94.9-97.3) were discharged the same day after surgery. The median operative time was 34 minutes (range 17-210 minutes), and estimated blood loss was 45 mL (range 5-800 mL). The median patient age was 46 years (range 27-86 years), and median uterine weight was 160 g (range 25-1,380 g). One hundred ninety-three patients (18%, 95% CI 15.8-20.5) were nulliparous and 218 (20%, 95% CI 18-22.9) had prior pelvic surgery. Five patients (0.5%, 95% CI 0.2-1.1) required readmission or emergency room evaluation within the first 30 days.

Vaginal hysterectomy can be successfully adopted as a same-day discharge procedure. In this population, regardless of previous pelvic surgery or nulliparity, good perioperative outcomes have been achieved.