Impact of Moderate to Severe Pain in the Post-intervention Monitoring Room After Hemorrhoidectomy on the Length of Stay in the Outpatient Surgery Unit

The target rate for outpatient surgery has been set by the Ministry of Health at 70% for 2020. To achieve this objective, this requires increasing the panel of eligible outpatient procedures to more mutilating surgeries and usually performed in conventional hospitalization. This switch from conventional hospitalization to an outpatient stay increases the risk of converting stays into unscheduled hospitalization. Postoperative pain is one of the main factors in converting outpatient stays. Poor control is associated with increased length of stay, and unscheduled consultations and readmissions. In addition, the increased time spent with severe pain during the first 24 hours postoperatively is a risk factor for chronicization.

Proctology, and, in particular, hemorrhoidal surgery is the perfect example. Outpatient management of open pedicle hemorrhoidectomy is increasing year by year, but the rate of conversion to unscheduled hospitalizations remains high. Urine retention, postoperative hemorrhage and poor pain control are the main causes. Within the Paris Saint Joseph Hospital Group, hemorrhoidal surgery has the highest rate of conversions from hospitalization to proctology (8% in 2019), despite the implementation since 2015 of a dedicated, developed according to the current recommendations of the SNFCP.

The pain after hemorrhoidal surgery is always severe in the absence of analgesics and appears upon arrival in the post-interventional monitoring room (SSPI). Despite the administration of analgesics or the implementation of locoregional analgesia techniques (pudendal block), moderate to severe pain is frequently observed in the post-intervention monitoring room. In the medical literature, there is little data evaluating the means of management of postoperative pain in this surgery, and even less the effect of the different associations.

Retrospectively and, from the data collected in our information systems, we wish to assess the impact on the length of stay of the presence of moderate to severe pain in the IPSS after a two-way or tri-pedicle hemorrhoidal surgery open on our cohort of patients operated in outpatient surgery. Our hypothesis is that the presence of moderate to severe pain in PPSS increases the total length of stay, placing the patient at an increased risk of conversion. The purpose of our study is also to identify predictive factors (aggravating or protective) of the onset of moderate to severe pain immediately after surgery, in order to establish a strategy to limit its frequency.