Postanesthesia Care for the Elderly Patient

Postanesthesia Care for the Elderly Patient.

PURPOSE As the general population lives longer, the perioperative physician is more likely to encounter disease states that increase in incidence in an aging population. This review focuses on anesthetic considerations for rational drug choices during the perioperative care of elderly patients. The primary aim of the review was to identify intraoperative and postanesthetic considerations for di...

Postanesthesia care 'action plan' aims to ensure optimal patient safety.

Perioperative care for the elderly patient.

As the population survives longer, surgery has become a much more common consideration. Preoperative management of these patients requires a working knowledge of changes associated with aging and the physiology of surgery and anesthesia. Using this information, patients can be clinically evaluated effectively and plans made for their perioperative care to minimize complications.

A Reemergence Device for the Postanesthesia Care Unit

Hypercapnia is frequently used to accelerate emergence from anesthesia in the OR, but not in the post anesthesia care unit (PACU). To this end, a reemergence device has been proposed that will take advantage of hypercapnia to reduce recovery time and number of adverse clinical events experienced in the PACU. In order to design a device capable of meeting the wide range of breathing patterns exh...

Evaluation of Waste Anesthetic Gas in the Postanesthesia Care Unit within the Patient Breathing Zone

Potential health hazards from waste anesthetic gases (WAGs) have been a concern since the introduction of inhalational anesthetics into clinical practice. The potential to exceed recommended exposure levels (RELs) in the postanesthesia care unit (PACU) exists. The aim of this pilot study was to assess sevoflurane WAG levels while accounting for factors that affect inhalational anesthetic elimin...