Management of ambulatory (day case) endovascular procedures for peripheral arterial disease.

Introduction: Thanks to exceptional improvements in technological developments and vascular teams' expertise, endovascular repair of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) has drastically increased these past decades. Incidence of PAD rising, pressure to reduce costs and patient's empowerment make outpatient endovascular procedures for PAD an attractive alternative to conventional hospitalization. This review describes outpatient endovascular procedures for PAD in the literature.

Evidence Acquisition: We used PRISMA guidelines and Medline to conduct this systematic review. 448 relevant articles were found. Twelve articles, all published after year 2000 were included and reviewed by two independent investigators.

Evidence Synthesis: Among 12 selected articles, 10762 outpatient endovascular procedures were performed and 3883 procedures were realized for arterial lower limb revascularization. Average age was 65.2. Major exclusion criteria were social isolation (no available accompanying adult for the first 24 hours, no available communication system) and high-risk patients (ASA 4 and above). During the perioperative period, no death was noted. Major hematoma rate was 0% to 3%, minor hematoma rate went from 1.6% to 20%. Conversion to in-patient status for overnight observation occurred in 0% to 16% in ten real life studies and was mostly due to complications at puncture site. Reintervention over the first month occurred in 0% to 4%. Readmission in the first month after being discharged occurred in 0% to 3.2%. Diabetes and critical limb ischemia were not related to higher complication rate.

Conclusions: This review indicates that outpatient endovascular procedures for PAD are safe and efficient. Guidelines are necessary to enforce patients' selection and insure high quality perioperative care.