Regional anesthesia for outpatient surgery.

In summary, regional techniques offer significant advantages in the outpatient setting. They can avoid the side effects of nausea, vomiting, and pain that frequently delay discharge or cause admission. They can also provide prolonged analgesia as well as offer, with the use of continuous catheters, the promise of a pain-free perioperative period. The choice of drugs must be carefully adjusted, especially with neuraxial techniques. Despite frequently requiring some additional time at the outset, regional techniques have consistently been shown to provide competitive discharge times and costs when compared with general anesthesia. They deserve a prominent place in outpatient surgery.