Take-Home Video Shortens the Time to First Ambulation in Patients With Inguinal Hernia Repair Under General Anesthesia: A Retrospective Observational Study

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Jun 29:9:848280. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.848280. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Background: Data on the relationship between take-home video and the time to first ambulation remains scant. Here, we aimed to investigate whether viewed take-home video during pre-hospitalization is independently associated with the time to first ambulation in postoperative patients with inguinal hernia repair under general anesthesia.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed and analyzed the relationship between viewed take-home video and the time to first ambulation between September 2020 and October 2021.The independent t-tests or Mann-Whitney U-tests was used to compare the means of two groups (viewed take-home video and non-viewed take-home video). Chi-square test was used to compare the rates between the two groups. We used a linear regression model to see if there was a difference between exposure and outcome variable. Both models were used to observe the effect size of the exposed variable. Subgroup analysis was employed to assess the impact of various factors.

Results: This study included a total of 120 patients with inguinal hernia repair under general anesthesia following day surgery. The average age of the participants in the two groups was 43.16 and 44.83 years, respectively, and about 82.5% of the patients were male. Our fully adjusted linear regression results showed that individuals in the viewed video group were associated with a decreased time to first ambulation (h) after adjusting for confounders (β = -0.50, 95%CI: -0.83, -0.17; P = 0.004). In addition, the linear regression analysis of the relationship between viewed video and length of stay showed that β = -2.10 (95%CI:CI: -3.85, -0.34; P = 0.021). Similarly, subgroup analysis yielded similar results for the viewed video group patients compared to those in the non-viewed video group.

Conclusion: Taken together, our findings demonstrated that viewed video could shorten the time to first ambulation, which in turn reduce the length of stay in postoperative patients under general anesthesia.

Keywords: early ambulation; general anesthesia; length of stay; postoperative recovery; take-home; video education.