Anaesthesia | Recognition of the critically ill patient | Indication for post operative critical care

Indication for Postoperative Critical Care
Session Overview
Description
This session explores the rationale for critical care admission in the postoperative patient, how to identify patients likely to benefit from critical care, and the benefits of admission.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Assess the most commonly used risk assessment tools and use them appropriately to risk stratify patients perioperatively
• Describe the patient factors that define a patient as 'high risk'
• Identify the general and specific surgical factors that influence admissions to critical care
• Describe the intraoperative events that are associated with an increased morbidity and mortality
• Assess the role of critical care postoperatively in preventing morbidity and mortality following surgery

Prerequisites
Before commencing this session you should:

• Have an understanding of triage and scoring systems (NEWS/APACHE/SOFA) and CCOT

Patients require admission to the ICU postoperatively for many reasons. For some surgical patients it is for treatment, in order to continue resuscitation in an emergency, or to deliver inotropic support. Other patients require close monitoring in order to prevent further deterioration or new complications.

Patients who develop a complication postoperatively do worse than those who do not have any complications. Postoperative complications that are not recognised promptly and treated aggressively increase the risk of significant morbidity and mortality (Fig 1) [1](read details regarding the reference).