New rules have been formulated for office-based surgeries in Tuscon. The state’s medical board proposed new rules for office-based surgeries because of a series of problems with surgeries performed at doctor’s offices.

The rules would require doctors to have specific monitoring and emergency equipment, provide specialized staff training and inform patients of the risks of having surgery done in an office setting.

Until now, the state has exercised little oversight of the trend of performing more invasive surgeries requiring sedation in doctors\' offices, instead of fully staffed and equipped hospitals or outpatient surgery centers.

The trend is especially popular among plastic surgeons performing elective, cosmetic procedures, because it offers privacy and lower prices to their patients and bigger profits to the surgeons.

The most recent case occurred in Tucson in December, when a 53-year-old attorney stopped breathing and suffered cardiac arrest during cosmetic surgery in the office of a plastic surgeon. The attorney remained in a coma, on life support, until her death 10 days later.

The proposed rules are now open to public comment and then will be reviewed by the governor\'s office. If accepted, they could go into effect in Arizona by May.

The state health department currently inspects and licenses only the offices of surgeons who use full general anesthesia in that setting. But most office-based surgeries today use a wide variety of sedation techniques, and so escape state oversight.

That is a major remedy in the medical board\'s new rules, which require specific monitoring, training and equipment for all levels of sedation, from \'minimal\' to \'deep.\'