Fast-Track Recovery and Outpatient Joint Arthroplasty

There is a growing interest in performing joint arthroplasty on an outpatient or short-stay basis. Several factors make the hospital environment itself less than ideal for providing optimal health care, and follow-up of hospitalized patients represents a substantial time burden for the orthopedic surgeon. Essential components of a successful outpatient arthroplasty program include: robust screening of patients to ensure selection of appropriate candidates; preoperative patient preparation, including setting appropriate expectations; modification of surgical approaches where appropriate; and proactive, multimodal pain management to enable patients to walk earlier after surgery, so that they can be discharged home the same day.