An increasing number of people are choosing to be awake for certain surgical procedures in an effort to avoid general anesthesia and the postoperative side effects of sedation, CBS New York’s Dr. Max Gomez reports.

At NYU Langone, orthopedic surgeons have developed a wide awake hand surgery program with a dedicated operating room space at the Outpatient Surgery Center to meet this growing demand.

For some people, wide awake hand surgery be a more convenient option because they don’t have to undergo tests or fast prior to surgery and can go home soon after without an escort, explains S. Steven Yang, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone’s Hand Center.

“Patients are often asked to get blood tests, have an EKG, a chest X-ray, so in our cases where we do those procedures wide awake patients don’t need to do that. There’s no pre-op testing,” Dr. Yang tells CBS New York.

He points out that wide awake hand surgery may not be an option for all patients considering hand surgery, but for two of his patients interviewed in the segment, they report positive experiences.

Watch more from CBS New York.