For people having surgery unrelated to their hearts, new guidelines detail how to manage heart and stroke risks before, during and after surgery. The guidelines , based on evidence accumulated over the past decade, address issues such as how to minimize testing to avoid unnecessary costs and delays in surgery and how to properly manage blood pressure and heart medications. They were issued Tuesday by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology.
Seven other medical societies endorsed the new guidelines. "There is a wealth of new evidence about how best to evaluate and manage perioperative cardiovascular risk in patients undergoing noncardiac surgery," Dr. Annemarie Thompson, who led the guidelines writing group, said in a news release .
Thompson is a professor of anesthesiology, medicine and population health sciences at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. "Worldwide, there are approximately 300 million noncardiac surgeries each year, which underscores the need to summarize and interpret the evidence to assist clinicians in managing patients who present for surgery," she said. The updated guidelines, which target health professionals across disciplines, were written for patients scheduled for non-heart surgery from the time they're evaluated before surgery through postoperative care.
They include recommendations for patients with coronary artery disease, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, heart valve disease, pulmonary hypertension, ob.