Background It has been reported that prolonged intensive care unit (ICU) stay after cardiac surgery is associated with poor patient outcome. In addition, prolonged stay can block the efficient use of ICU beds with an increase in expenditure of health-care costs. The aim of the present study was to retrospectively determine which pre- and intra-operative factors could significantly affect ICU-fr...

Few studies have evaluated the risk factors for in-hospital mortality in critically ill surgical patients who have undergone emergency gastrointestinal (GI) surgery. The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors associated with in-hospital mortality in critically ill surgical patients after emergency GI surgery.The medical records of 362 critically ill surgical patients who underwent e...

BACKGROUND Hip fracture surgery on elderly patients is associated with a high incidence of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to identify the risk factors related to the postoperative mortality and complications following hip fracture surgery on elderly patients. METHODS In this retrospective study, the medical records of elderly patients (aged 65 years or older) who underwent ...

Background: The routine use of preoperative appropriate paraclinic testing is useful in patients scheduled to undergo elective surgery. The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of unnecessary preoperative evaluation performed for patients undergoing elective surgeries.Methods: This descriptive analytic study was performed to assess the patterns of preoperative evaluation tests on ...

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Randomized and nonrandomized single-center studies suggest that preoperative geriatric evaluation improves postoperative outcomes in older adults. The generalizability and population-level effect of preoperative geriatric evaluation has not been determined. Our objective was to measure the adjusted association between preoperative geriatric evaluation and postoperative out...

BACKGROUND Preoperative consultations by internal medicine physicians facilitate documentation of comorbid disease, optimization of medical conditions, risk stratification, and initiation of interventions intended to reduce risk. Nonetheless, the impact of these consultations, which may be performed by general internists or specialists, on outcomes is unclear. METHODS We used population-based...

The incidence of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has reached epidemic proportions, and it is an often unrecognized cause of perioperative morbidity and mortality. Profound hypoxic injury from apnea during the postoperative period is often misdiagnosed as cardiac arrest due to other causes. Almost a quarter of patients entering a hospital for elective surgery have OSA, and >80% of these cases are ...

OBJECTIVE Following cardiac surgery, a great variety in intensive care unit (ICU) stay is observed, making it often difficult to adequately predict ICU stay preoperatively. Therefore, a study was conducted to investigate, which preoperative variables are independent risk factors for a prolonged ICU stay and whether a patient's risk of experiencing an extended ICU stay can be estimated from thes...

BACKGROUND The goal of this study was to evaluate whether preoperative pressure pain sensitivity testing is predictive of postoperative surgical pain. METHODS Female subjects undergoing lower abdominal gynecologic surgery were studied. A pressure algometer was used preoperatively to determine the pressure pain threshold and tolerance. A visual analog scale (VAS) was used to assess postoperati...

T HE phrase “cleared for surgery” is one that nearly every anesthesiologist has seen documented in the medical record of a patient presenting for surgery. Unfortunately, being “cleared for surgery” means very little to the scrutinizing anesthesiologist. More fundamentally, it is unclear why certain patients are referred to be “cleared” in the first place. In this issue of ANESTHESIOLOGY, Wijeys...