DeKalb County will open its first Day Surgery Center at Kishwaukee Community Hospital Sunday with an official “gauze cutting” ceremony and open house.

The center, which occupies over 2,100 square feet of space within the hospital, includes several operating rooms, a recovery room and a regional induction room, a hospital spokesperson said.

“The center was built because of the growing needs of day surgery patients,” said hospital president Wayne Fesler. “In the hospital’s first full year of operation, only 37 outpatient procedures were performed. In just ten years, that figure has jumped to over 29,000 procedures in our latest fiscal year. That figure is approximately 60 percent of all surgeries.”

The center will be used primarily for this outpatient program, in which patients leave on the same day of their surgery. Non-incision surgery, biopsies, cataract surgery and tubal ligations are some of the operations the center will be used for, the spokesperson said.

The cost of the center’s building and operation is $175,000. A percentage of this total was raised through the efforts of the hospital’s annual Giving Club. The club, which is made up of volunteers and headed by chairman Tom Melton, managed to top their goal of obtaining 100 new members this year and raised $49,000 towards the building of the center.

An opportunity for the public to view the new center will be available at the open house from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. New equipment purchased for the center will be displayed. “We are showing the ‘price tags’ along with this equipment because we think it’s important for people to know just how expensive this type of equipment is,” the spokesperson added.

Free refreshments, educational materials and a special half-price reduction of the Kishcare emergency medical card will also be available at the open house. The card gives personal medical information about its holder.

The hospital is also planning a program on “Stress, Biofeedback and Your Healthy Heart” on Feb. 24. The free program, led by Jerry Lane, administrator of the DeKalb County Community Mental Health Board, will focus on the harmful effects of stress on the heart and techniques for stress reduction. This will be the final program in the hospital’s celebration of National Heart Month.