The use of peripheral blocks is increasing due to the advantages they have over general anesthesia, despite this, the use of general anesthesia is still very high in many parts of the world. The use of interscalene block is successfully employed for shoulder surgery and there is now evidence both for and against its use versus general anesthesia. This study seeks to compare hospital stay between patients undergoing shoulder arthroscopy under general anesthesia vs patients undergoing the same procedure with the use of an interscalene block. Our goal is to identify which group of patients have a longer hospital stay which can correlate with a higher number of complications. This study is a retrospective analysis of 70 subjects where we aimed to compare the number of days every patient stayed in the hospital after surgery. The resulta fo this study were that 14.30 % (n= 10) of the subjects presented some type of postanesthetic complication, where 80.00 % (n= 8) of the subjects underwent general anesthesia and 20.00 % (n= 2) underwent interscalene block, statistically significant distribution (p= 0.040) and when hospital stay was comparedthere was a statistically significant difference for a shorter in-hospital stay in subjects who underwent interscalene block (p < 0.001). These results suggest that interscalene blockade may provide adequate analgesic control as well as a shorter in-hospital stay compared to balanced general anesthesia alone and may be a better management option for the anesthesiologist if appropriately individualized for each patient.
