They were vaguely aware but the attendings who staff the ASC are, shall we say, mostly hands off. Also generally try to stay out of the way of surgeons. Those facts also did not escape the M&M.
Everything is fine, until it isn't. The question is, when something bad happens (which is unavoidable, regardless of how careful you are), how will history judge you? Obviously, you can find an expert witness to support or destroy whatever decision you make, but for me, personally, I'd want to know what the majority of my colleagues find reasonable. The case I mentioned was probably like 98:2 against that decision. Your example is still lower, maybe like 85:15, but still pushing it.
The risk:benefit for healthy patients having elective procedures is obviously way skewed compared to sick patients w/ sick procedures. If you end up with LAST because you're pushing the limits of LA toxicity to avoid a GA on a cardiopulmonary cripple, that's obviously a very different story than an 18yo having plastic surgery.
