Pre-Anaesthetic Fitness for Surgery

Abstract

Introduction:Pre-anaesthetic fitness for surgery requires preanaesthetic evaluation of the patient which is one of the essential parts of perioperative care. Several large scales epidemiological confidential study into peri-operative death showed that inadequate preparation of the patients were the major contributory factors for perioperative mortality 1 ; the mortality rate is 0.01% 2 . The factors include recognition of existing problems of the patient at the earliest opportunity; the process must be designed to allow the problematic patients to be seen by an experienced anaesthesiologist well in advance of proposed surgery 3 . This can be achieved if proper anaesthetic check up is done as soon as the patient is scheduled for operative procedure. The main purpose is to keep the patients in their best possible physiological condition to undergo anaesthesia and to ensure that the benefit of surgery must not be outweighed by perioperative risks. There should not be any lapse in the routine procedure of pre-anaesthetic formalities. Many a time a small little gap in this practice could bring severe catastrophe to the patient and to the operative team.