Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine Perioperative medicine is a term currently employed to describe the pre and postoperative care of surgical patients so far as it is relevant to the successful completion of a surgical procedure.
Preoperative care begins with routine but thorough general medical or pediatric care.
This can obviate many frustrations and delays as the day of surgery approaches. Records including electrocardiograms can be brought by the patient or faxed to the attending neurosurgeon. If there is a history of diffiuculties with anesthesia, old anesthesia records are extremely useful. The actual preoperative evaluation takes place in a specially designated pre-surgical assessment center for outpatients. Inpatients are seen by a member of the anesthesia department on the evening before surgery unless the patient has chosen to be absent on surgical furlough and is therefore unavailable.