How much ambulatory surgery in the World in 1996-1997 and trends?

Health professionals and public authorities no longer dispute that ambulatory surgery as an alternative to inpatient hospitalisation responds positively to patient and health care personnel expectations. It provides an opportunity to improve quality and a better use of available resources. Professional control and policy incentives to ensure equity, efficiency and effectiveness require a solid factual base. At national and at international levels the information available has been very limited and, at a comparative level particularly, often based on a single individual’s sample based on fragmentary records, multiple definitions and crude, uninformative ratios. The success of the first survey [1] on prevalence and trends launched by the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery (IAAS) among its members and by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through its Health Policy Unit network of correspondents invited a repeat of the survey on a recurrent basis.