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P186 Awake upper limb surgery service – providing patient satisfaction and efficiency

rapm · 2025-09-10 · canonical JSON source

2 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Please confirm that an ethics committee approval has been applied for or granted: Yes: I’m uploading the Ethics Committee Approval as a PDF file with this abstract submissionBackground and Aims We run a well-established upper limb plastic surgery list in a large district general hospital in the north of England. This service evaluation examines the efficiency of the list and patient satisfaction. The list is split between expedited trauma cases in the morning and elective patients in the afternoon. Blocks are primarily brachial plexus blocks along with selected forearm peripheral nerve blocks, depending on requirements for hand innervation. Motor sparing blocks also enable on table functional assessment if required. These are performed with lidocaine and adrenaline for a quick onset of action.Methods Data was collected for the duration of 2024. This included 50 patients in total, with 35 followed up to assess patient satisfaction and 15 lost to follow up. Data includes operation room timings, operation and block type, along with local anaesthetic used. Historic data was used to compare these variables for patients who had a GA for similar procedures as a reference. Telephone follow up (35/50) allowed retrospective data collection on variables including pain during procedure and patient satisfaction.Results Patients who received regional anaesthesia had a short length of stay, time in theatre before operating began and time between end of operation and discharge to the ward. The patients reported no nausea and vomiting, and had good overall experience scores, with 91% rating their experience 5/5, and 94% saying they would recommend the experience. Patients felt well informed (100% rated information given 5/5), and 97% had 5/5 confidence in the anaesthetist. The service was efficient - the interval between patient arrival to surgery start was on average 15 minutes.Conclusions Within an established awake regional anaesthesia list, we can streamline patient experience utilising the multidisciplinary team including specialist nurses, surgeons, anaesthetic team and theatre staff, facilitating shorter length of stay with high patient satisfaction.