A post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) and sometimes referred to as post-anesthesia recovery or PAR, or simply recovery, is a part of hospitals, ambulatory care centers, and other medical facilities. Patients who received general anesthesia, regional anesthesia, or local anesthesia are transferred from the operating room suites to the recovery area. The patients are monitored typically by anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and other medical staff. [1] [2] Providers follow a standardized handoff to the medical PACU staff that includes, which medications were given in the operating room suites, how hemodynamics were during the procedures, and what is expected for their recovery. After initial assessment and stabilization, patients are monitored for any potential complications, until the patient is transferred back to their hospital rooms–or in the case of some outpatient surgeries, discharged to their responsible person (driver). [3] [2]
The initial handoff, or otherwise referred as handover, is an interdisciplinary transfer of essential and critical patient information from one healthcare provider to another. Variations do exist depending on certain hospitals, medical facilities, and patient presentations. [4] The most common information includes:
As the patient remains in the PACU, the following are consistently monitored by medical professionals:
Vital signs are obtained every 5 minutes for the first 15 minutes. The PACU staff monitor that the Respiratory Rate and Saturation of Oxygen remain as close to baseline of that patient while the heart rate and blood pressure remain within 20% of their baseline values. [3]
More intensive care monitoring may include:
Depending on the use of inhalation anesthestics, post operative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is one of the most common complications to monitor in the immediate postoperative period. [5] Patients do receive antiemetic medications, such as Ondansetron and Dexamethasone, during the surgical procedure if the patient is at risk for it. [1] [6] Along with PONV, there are numerous complications that can happen with many different organ systems, the most threatening of which involves the respiratory system, and cardiovascular system. [5]
Risk Factors are factored into account to assess for complications during the preoperative assessment. Some factors include preexisting factors such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), obesity, heart failure, and pulmonary hypertension.
Clinical signs and symptoms are assessed to indicate any respiratory system complications, such as Tachypnea (RR > 20 breaths/min), Bradypnea (RR < 12 breaths/min), SpO2 <93%, Anxiety, Confusion, or Agitation with resulting Tachycardia and Hypertension.
The life-threatening complications that are monitored in PACU include:
Cardiovascular complications such as arrhythmias and hemodynamic Instability are the third most common postoperative complication. [5] The risk factors that are assessed preoperatively include the severity of any preexisting cardiovascular comorbidities, such as congestive heart failure, valvular heart disease, and myocardial infarctions. The medical professional also assesses if the patient has had any recent traumas and the severity of perioperative stresses such as blood loss, fluid shifts, and hypotension.
Clinical signs and symptoms are assessed to indicate any cardiovascular system complications, specifically hemodynamic instability and vital signs.
Patients who undergo major procedures that deal with volume status perioperatively can be at risk for hypotension due to fluid shifts or significant bleeding. Hemoglobin is measured and monitored if significant bleeding could have occurred. Treatment includes either replacement of the lost blood products as pRBC, or with crystalloid solutions while monitoring electrolyte abnormalities in Lactated Ringers Solution, Normal Saline, or Crystalloid. Patients can also experience life-threatening hypotensive shock due to hemorrhage, sepsis, cardiogenic, or anaphylactic.
Anesthesia or anaesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical or veterinary purposes. It may include some or all of analgesia, paralysis, amnesia, and unconsciousness. An individual under the effects of anesthetic drugs is referred to as being anesthetized.
Sedation is the reduction of irritability or agitation by administration of sedative drugs, generally to facilitate a medical procedure or diagnostic procedure. Examples of drugs which can be used for sedation include isoflurane, diethyl ether, propofol, etomidate, ketamine, pentobarbital, lorazepam and midazolam.
Intensive care medicine, usually called critical care medicine, is a medical specialty that deals with seriously or critically ill patients who have, are at risk of, or are recovering from conditions that may be life-threatening. It includes providing life support, invasive monitoring techniques, resuscitation, and end-of-life care. Doctors in this specialty are often called intensive care physicians, critical care physicians, or intensivists.
General anaesthesia (UK) or general anesthesia (US) is a method of medically inducing loss of consciousness that renders a patient unarousable even with painful stimuli. This effect is achieved by administering either intravenous or inhalational general anaesthetic medications, which often act in combination with an analgesic and neuromuscular blocking agent. Spontaneous ventilation is often inadequate during the procedure and intervention is often necessary to protect the airway. General anaesthesia is generally performed in an operating theater to allow surgical procedures that would otherwise be intolerably painful for a patient, or in an intensive care unit or emergency department to facilitate endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients. Depending on the procedure, general anaesthesia may be optional or required. Regardless of whether a patient may prefer to be unconscious or not, certain pain stimuli could result in involuntary responses from the patient that may make an operation extremely difficult. Thus, for many procedures, general anaesthesia is required from a practical perspective.
Awareness under anesthesia, also referred to as intraoperative awareness or accidental awareness during general anesthesia (AAGA), is a rare complication of general anesthesia where patients regain varying levels of consciousness during their surgical procedures. While anesthesia awareness is possible without resulting in any long-term memory of the experience, it is also possible for victims to have awareness with explicit recall, where they can remember the events related to their surgery.
Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is the phenomenon of nausea, vomiting, or retching experienced by a patient in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) or within 24 hours following a surgical procedure. PONV affects about 10% of the population undergoing general anaesthesia each year. PONV can be unpleasant and lead to a delay in mobilization and food, fluid, and medication intake following surgery.
A thoracotomy is a surgical procedure to gain access into the pleural space of the chest. It is performed by surgeons to gain access to the thoracic organs, most commonly the heart, the lungs, or the esophagus, or for access to the thoracic aorta or the anterior spine. A thoracotomy is the first step in thoracic surgeries including lobectomy or pneumonectomy for lung cancer or to gain thoracic access in major trauma.
Remifentanil, marketed under the brand name Ultiva is a potent, short-acting synthetic opioid analgesic drug. It is given to patients during surgery to relieve pain and as an adjunct to an anaesthetic. Remifentanil is used for sedation as well as combined with other medications for use in general anesthesia. The use of remifentanil has made possible the use of high-dose opioid and low-dose hypnotic anesthesia, due to synergism between remifentanil and various hypnotic drugs and volatile anesthetics.
Perioperative mortality has been defined as any death, regardless of cause, occurring within 30 days after surgery in or out of the hospital. Globally, 4.2 million people are estimated to die within 30 days of surgery each year. An important consideration in the decision to perform any surgical procedure is to weigh the benefits against the risks. Anesthesiologists and surgeons employ various methods in assessing whether a patient is in optimal condition from a medical standpoint prior to undertaking surgery, and various statistical tools are available. ASA score is the most well known of these.
Capnography is the monitoring of the concentration or partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO
2) in the respiratory gases. Its main development has been as a monitoring tool for use during anesthesia and intensive care. It is usually presented as a graph of CO
2 (measured in kilopascals, "kPa" or millimeters of mercury, "mmHg") plotted against time, or, less commonly, but more usefully, expired volume (known as volumetric capnography). The plot may also show the inspired CO
2, which is of interest when rebreathing systems are being used. When the measurement is taken at the end of a breath (exhaling), it is called "end tidal" CO
2 (PETCO2).
The perioperative period is the period of a patient's surgical procedure. It commonly includes ward admission, anesthesia, surgery, and recovery. Perioperative may refer to the three phases of surgery: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative, though it is a term most often used for the first and third of these only - a term which is often specifically utilized to imply 'around' the time of the surgery. The primary concern of perioperative care is to provide better conditions for patients before an operation and after an operation.
A surgical nurse, also referred to as a theatre nurse or scrub nurse, specializes in perioperative care, providing care to patients before, during and after surgery. To become a theatre nurse, Registered Nurses or Enrolled Nurses must complete extra training. Theatre nurses can focus on different speciality areas, depending on which they are interested in.
Neurocritical care is a medical field that treats life-threatening diseases of the nervous system and identifies, prevents, and treats secondary brain injury.
Cardiothoracic anesthesiology is a subspeciality of the medical practice of anesthesiology, devoted to the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care of adult and pediatric patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery and related invasive procedures.
Geriatric anesthesia is the branch of medicine that studies anesthesia approach in elderly.
Procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) is a technique in which a sedating/dissociative medication is given, usually along with an analgesic medication, in order to perform non-surgical procedures on a patient. The overall goal is to induce a decreased level of consciousness while maintaining the patient's ability to breathe on their own. Airway protective reflexes are not compromised by this process and therefore endotracheal intubation is not required. PSA is commonly used in the emergency department, in addition to the operating room.
Emergence delirium is a condition in which emergence from general anesthesia is accompanied by psychomotor agitation. Some see a relation to pavor nocturnus while others see a relation to the excitement stage of anesthesia.
Postoperative residual curarization (PORC) or residual neuromuscular blockade (RNMB) is a residual paresis after emergence from general anesthesia that may occur with the use of neuromuscular-blocking drugs. Today residual neuromuscular blockade is defined as a train of four ratio of less than 0.9 when measuring the response to ulnar nerve stimulation at the adductor pollicis muscle using mechanomyography or electromyography. A meta-analysis reported that the incidence of residual neuromuscular paralysis was 41% in patients receiving intermediate neuromuscular blocking agents during anaesthesia. It is possible that > 100,000 patients annually in the USA alone, are at risk of adverse events associated with undetected residual neuromuscular blockade. Neuromuscular function monitoring and the use of the appropriate dosage of sugammadex to reverse blockade produced by rocuronium can reduce the incidence of postoperative residual curarization. In this study, with usual care group receiving reversal with neostigmine resulted in a residual blockade rate of 43%.
Peter Kranke is anesthetist and professor of anesthesiology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Kranke is known for the design and conduct of clinical studies and for performing systematic reviews in the context of perioperative medicine. He published numerous papers on research focussed on evidence-based medicine and interventional and observational trials on postoperative nausea and vomiting and other issues in conjunction with perioperative medicine and associated topics including patient blood management. The area of his clinical responsibility and interest, among others, is the safe provision of anesthesia and analgesia in obstetrics and gynecology.
Total intravenous anesthesia (TIVA) refers to the intravenous administration of anesthetic agents to induce a temporary loss of sensation or awareness. The first study of TIVA was done in 1872 using chloral hydrate, and the common anesthetic agent propofol was licensed in 1986. TIVA is currently employed in various procedures as an alternative technique of general anesthesia in order to improve post-operative recovery.
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