BMJ 1998;317:1081 ( 17 October )

Letters

Medical and psychological effects of early discharge after surgery for breast cancer

    Patients can be discharged on second postoperative morning
    Follow up period to assess psychological morbidity was too short
    Home situation is important for early discharge
    Authors' reply

Patients can be discharged on second postoperative morning

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Bonnema et al studied medical and psychological effects of early discharge after surgery for breast cancer.1 Their results agree with our experience of early discharge in a district general hospital in the United Kingdom.2

To compare the care received by the two groups it is necessary to know what facilities were afforded to the early discharge group. These details were lacking in the paper. We routinely provide domiciliary physiotherapy (which is important after axillary surgery) and specialist breast counselling to ensure that our patients at home receive the same treatment as those in hospital.

We are unsure why the authors chose four days as the discharge time for their early discharge group. After a pilot study we now routinely discharge all patients suitable for domiciliary care on the second postoperative morning. Ninety per cent of patients thought that this was an appropriate postoperative stay. Analysis of use of . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Medical and psychosocial effects of early discharge after surgery for breast cancer: randomised trial
Jorien Bonnema, Anneke M E A van Wersch, Albert N van Geel, Jean F A Pruyn, Paul I M Schmitz, Marinus A Paul, and Theo Wiggers
BMJ 1998 316: 1267-1271. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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