To Admit or Not to Admit, That Is the Question

Abstract

To the Editor. —The article by Isernhagen et al¹ in the June issue of the Archives attempted to establish prospectively the necessity for inpatient hospital care. Our experience during the past eight years suggests that the vast majority of patients do very well both medically and socially in an outpatient setting. Outpatient surgery was gradually adopted for use in most of our patients as a review of inpatient medical records disclosed an absence of a medical necessity for admission. The option of admission always has been available but less than 15% of patients have required admission after discharge from our outpatient area. We routinely ask all patients on the first postoperative day about their experiences after surgery and certainly would have modified our approach if we had received any substantial complaints. A retrospective telephone survey of our past 20 consecutive outpatients who underwent vitreoretinal surgery did not disclose any