Neonatal and childhood perioperative considerations.

The perioperative care of infants and children requires a team approach. Surgeons must recognize potential risk factors for adverse perioperative events and work with the anesthesiologist and other consultants to reduce or eliminate these factors to optimize the child’s perioperative care. In the past decade, there has been considerable progress in perioperative management that now makes surgery safer and less distressing for children and their families. In this review, the authors cover recent advances in preoperative evaluation and intraoperative and postoperative management, focusing mainly on the immediate perioperative period for elective surgical procedures. Consistent with the authors’ view that the optimal outcome is achieved by close collaboration of members of the surgical team, this review was written jointly by surgeons and an anesthesiologist.