The Role of an Anesthesiologic Ambulance in Preoperative Preparation for Anesthesia

Overview

Careful and targeted preanesthetic evaluation of patients scheduled for anesthesia presents an important step in the prevention of severeperioperative complications. The basic goal of anesthesiologic ambulance is the improvement of preoperative assessment while decreasing the needfor complementary examination and laboratory tests, that could be effectively done in the out-hospital setting. The working of the ambulance contributesto the decrease of the number of re-scheduled cases due to incomplete preanesthetic examination or suboptimal compensation just prior to a surgicalprocedure. The indications for a visit in the anesthesiologic ambulance are day-case surgery, major surgery in a high-risk patient or a presence ofa severe complicating disease. Within one year, there have been evaluated 1,384 patients in the ambulance of Department of Anesthesiology andIntensive Care, Charles University Teaching Hospital Hradec Králové. According to the preoperative risk, seven patients were recommended foranesthesia only from “vital indication“, surgery was rescheduled in ten patients, surgery was cancelled due to extremely high risk in seven patients.The paper presents the working of the ambulance a evaluates its benefit for patients, surgical disciplines and anesthesiologists.

Key words:
preoperative evalulation – autotransfusion – anesthesiologic questionnaire