"According to the International Association for Ambulatory Surgery (IAAS), ambulatory surgery should be defined as: 'an operation/procedure, excluding an office or outpatient operation/procedure, where the patient is discharged on the same working day'. The origins of ambulatory surgery can be traced back to the pioneering work of James Nicholl at the Glasgow Royal Hospital who reported 8988 paediatric day case procedures between 1899-1908. Despite initial scepticism from the surgical profession, there has been a rapid expansion in the complexity and amount of ambulatory surgery in recent years: between 1989-2003 the percentage of elective surgery undertaken as day case in the UK increased from 15% to 70%. Many health services have set targets for the percentage of elective surgeries to be done as day-case procedures and in the UK this target is set at 75%"--