At Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, surgeons perform delicate procedures and send patients home the same day.
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The most recent example of this approach is a morning operation performed on a man with lung cancer. Despite the complexity of the surgery, the latter will leave the hospital in the afternoon.
“We have done six interventions of this kind here. It started (…) in part because of the constraints that COVID imposed on us, ”says Dr George Rakovich, surgeon at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.
To justify this new way of doing things in the field of pulmonary surgery, he explains that patients are generally “better at home than in the hospital”. In addition, due to the scarcity of hospital beds, this strategy makes it possible to avoid the postponement of certain urgent surgeries.
Dr Rakovich adds that this kind of surgery is a “team approach,” especially when it comes to managing pain medications.
Last year, in thoracic surgery, 96 patients were discharged home less than 24 hours after their operation. “Pulmonary surgeries, in day surgeries, are part of this philosophy, where we try to optimize all intraoperative care to minimize risks and complications and allow discharges quickly” says Dr Rakovich.
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