Seguridad de la práctica de la discectomía lumbar bajo régimen ambulatorio

background: the great social demand for patients'care with lumbar disk hernia requires the use of systems that improve social reintegration of these patients. objective: to evaluate the safety of ambulatory lumbar discectomy. method: a quasi-experiment, longitudinal and prospective study was conducted with all patients who underwent ambulatory lumbar discectomy at the neurosurgical unit in camagüey, from january 1st, 2010 to march 31st, 2011. an external control group was obtained from previous researches carried out in the unit. the analyzed indicators were: frequency of operated patients, anesthetic and surgical techniques used, complications, and the need of hospital admissions, as well as, the frequency of surgical reinterventions. descriptive techniques of non parametric variables and chi-squared test were applied. results: 73 patients were operated on ambulatory procedure, peridural anesthesia was used in 40 % of patients, the 46, 56 % of sick people had interlaminar fenestration or caspar's microdiskectomy and the 86, 3 % had no complications, value with statistical significance regarding the control group. conclusion: in this series of patients was demonstrated that ambulatory lumbar discectomy, constitutes a safe and effective method in surgical treatment.