Venkata Satish Dontaraju
Rockford Memorial Hospital, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Prim Health Care
Primary care physicians are asked to provide medical clearance to patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery on a regular basis by our surgical colleagues. Proper outpatient evaluation can decrease the length of the hospital stay which is extremely important in the era of the bundled payments for surgeries. Also, it can minimize postponed and cancelled surgeries. In the last decade, there is a move towards doing less non-invasive cardiac testing and one needs to be abreast of the changes. A physician should be able to understand the risk of surgery, evaluate functional capacity of the patient, predict major adverse cardiac events and make necessary recommendations. Recently, there is significant increase in the use of novel anticoagulants in patients with atrial fibrillation and physicians should be familiar when to stop and restart these medications. Several new diabetes medications are being used in patients and peri-operative diabetes management has significantly evolved.
