{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.018143754361479414, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.669767441860465, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Litigation and complaints associated with day-case anaesthesia

Day surgery continues to increase in popularity due to improved patient experience, safety benefits, and economic pressures to increase hospital productivity and efficiency. This approach has been made possible by improved anaesthetic pharmacology, increased use of regional anaesthesia, and innovative surgical techniques, and there is now an expectation that surgery should be day-case based wherever possible. While there are numerous well-accepted benefits for patients and health care organizations in performing surgery on a day-case basis, one problem with this approach is determining exactly what is possible and what is safe. Day-case procedures are no longer specific to American Society of Anaesthesiologists physical status classification grades one and two patients having brief and straightforward procedures; inclusion criteria have expanded to include more high-risk patients (e.g. the elderly and the obese) undergoing increasingly complex and prolonged surgical procedures. Patients with acute conditions presenting for urgent surgery are also now being managed within day-case pathways. These changes increase the risk of patient harm and the possibility of litigation. This article examines the recent literature around litigation and complaints that occur in day-case anaesthesia and discusses themes especially pertinent to this area of practice.