Quantifying recovery time after common pediatric surgical procedures

Parents need to plan for patients' recovery after pediatric operations. Standard guidance for pain medication use and time off school is not evidence based, for lack of data. This study aims to quantify recovery time and pain medication usage after common pediatric operations to improve the post-operative experience for families.

We performed a single-center retrospective survey at an academic tertiary care center. By protocol, patients who are discharged after routine outpatient surgeries are called 2-4 weeks later for follow up. We modified the post-operative call template to include asking when the patient returned to school and baseline behavior, when parent(s) returned to work, and how many days patients required pain medications. We abstracted encounters from December 2022-August 2024.

Follow-up data from the postoperative phone call was available for 192 patients who underwent laparoscopic appendectomy (uncomplicated appendicitis) (n = 65), umbilical hernia repair (n = 41), laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair (n = 40), out-patient laparoscopic cholecystectomy (n = 14), miscellaneous laparoscopy (n = 5), miscellaneous skin and soft tissue cases (n = 22), and pilonidal cyst excision (n = 5). On average patients used non-narcotic pain medications for 2-3 days, but parents did not think they were at baseline until post-operative day (POD) 5-6 and patients did not return to school until POD 6-8. On average, parents returned to work on POD 1-2.

Children miss a predictable number of school days after common pediatric surgeries, which may be more than pediatric surgeons anticipate. Data driven pre-operative counseling can improve families' trust in their health care team and facilitate anticipation of discharge needs.