SAN DIEGO -- Imagine undergoing a complicated orthopedic surgery, breast surgery or vascular surgery and going home the same day.

Nerve block anesthesia is making it possible for people to go home sooner and it also lessens pain, according to medical experts.

It’s been six years since Jeff Owens broke his wrist and it still has not healed.

“We tried to fix it again with screws and bone graft and unfortunately it didn't heal,” said University of California, San Diego chief of hand surgery Dr. Reed Abrams.

Abrams said the only solution for Owens was to reconstruct some of his wrist and partially fuse the bone.

Owens chose to use the nerve block anesthesia so he would need far less pain medication after surgery and be able to go home within an hour after surgery.

Anesthesiologist Ed Mariano said, “Patients can be as awake or as asleep as they want to be.”

Mariano offers outpatient surgery patients a new approach to anesthesia -- he numbs the specific nerve, interrupting pain sensory pathways and preventing them from reaching the brain.

By numbing targeted areas for surgery, patients like Owens avoid the aftereffects of general anesthesia.

"Things like nausea and vomiting don't occur, you don't have pain because we can supply anesthetic like Novocain similar to how a dentist injects a portion of your mouth to fill a cavity,” said Mariano.

Not only would Owens not feel pain during his complicated surgery, he also won’t feel pain for days afterward.

Mariano said, “We can actually place a catheter in the nerves, connected to a portable infusion pump that patients go home with and they can go home the same day with major surgery but recover at home.”

Owens looked forward to a less-painful recovery following surgery.

“It would be nice to get three days after surgery in that kind of comfort,” said Owens.

Nerve blocks are performed on more than 90 percent of outpatient orthopedic surgeries at UCSD, according to Mariano.

Medical experts said there are some possible side effects, including allergic reactions to local anesthetics.