Ambulatory Surgery in the United States, 1994

Advance Data 283.  A report just released from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) provides for the first time, data on ambulatory surgery in the United States. In 1994 NCHS initiated its National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery, a survey of surgical and nonsurgical procedures done on an ambulatory basis in the United States. Data were abstracted from 118,000 medical records in 494 hospitals and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.

Data Highlights:

In 1994 an estimated 28.3 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed during 18.8 million ambulatory surgery visits.

An estimated 16.0 million (85 percent) of the ambulatory surgery visits occurred in hospitals and 2.9 million (15 percent) occurred in freestanding centers.

There were four procedures performed more than a million times on ambulatory patients. These were extraction of lens, endoscopy of large intestine, insertion of prosthetic lens, and endoscopy of small intestine.

The procedures performed most often on children were ear surgery, myringotomy (556,000), tonsillectomy (263,000), adenoidectomy without tonsillectomy (142,000), and operation on teeth, gums, and alveoli (159,000).

Keywords:   ambulatory surgery, procedures, surgery, outpatients, outpatient surgery

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007