Perioperative medicine, interventions in surgical care: the role of replacing the late-night review with daytime leadership

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the ambitions of surgery have continued to develop, it has resulted in medical advancements that challenge the current paradigms of hospital medicine. Patients previously deemed unsuitable for surgery are now undergoing potentially lifesaving treatments, but are nonetheless still being managed within a model of care that fails to meet their individual needs. Termed ‘high risk’, these patients, who are frequently elderly or with multiple comorbidities, embark on a surgical journey that is often fragmented and disjointed. Such patients contribute a startlingly high mortality and morbidity rate for non-cardiac elective surgery during the perioperative period, and as a result provide an added demand on already strained hospital resources. ‘Perioperative medicine’ has been proposed as a possible solution to this problem as it attempts to create a bespoke patient-centric model of care from the moment the need for surgery is identified, through to patient recovery. It is envisaged that the role of a perioperative physician would be to oversee this journey, uniting varying specialties along the way to ensure the best possible patient outcomes.