The benefits of combining enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) interventions with an outpatient THA/TKA program are uncertain. The primary objective was to compare adverse event rate and secondly to compare pain management, functional recovery, PROMs and patients' satisfaction. We conducted an ambidirectional single subject cohort study on 48 consecutive patients who experienced both a standard-inpatient and an ERAS-outpatient THA/TKA (contralaterally). We compared complications according to Clavien-Dindo scale and Comprehensive Complications Index (CCI), and unplanned episodes of care. Postoperative pain assessed with a numeric rating scale, opioid consumption in morphine milligram equivalents, functional recovery, patient-reported outcome measures (WOMAC, KOOS, HOOS, Forgotten Joint Score and Patient Joint Perception) and patients' satisfaction were also evaluated.INTRODUCTION
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In recent years, there has been a shift toward outpatient and short-stay protocols for patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty (THA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA). We developed a peri-operative THA and TKA short stay protocol following the Enhance Recovery After Surgery principles (ERAS), aiming at both optimizing patients’ outcomes and reducing the hospital length of stay. The objective of this study was to evaluate the implementation of our ERAS short-stay protocol. We hypothesized that our ERAS THA and TKA short-stay protocol would result in a lower complication rate, shorter hospital length of stay and reduced direct health care costs compared to our standard procedure. We compared the complications rated according to Clavien-Dindo scale, hospital length of stay and costs of the episode of care between a prospective cohort of 120 ERAS short-stay THA or TKA and a matched historical control group of 150 THA or TKA.INTRODUCTION
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