What are pre-operative assessments?

When you come into hospital and get sent an appointment for a pre-operative assessment, this may take its form in more than one way. It may be the first instance you see a nurse who's a specialist in pre-operative assessment. They will bring you in and ask you some straightforward questions, ensure that you have all the investigations that are required set up to be done, either on that day or within the period before your surgery. These may include things like blood tests and other more complex investigations like lung function tests, ultrasound scans of your heart so that we can see the anatomy, other scans like a CT scan to look at the anatomy of a surgery that's about to be done. You'll be asked a set of quite comprehensive questions about your health, your social wellbeing, and your past medical history. The other person you may see in a pre-operative assessment clinic is an anaesthetist. If you're undergoing surgery that requires anesthesia in order for you to undergo it, particularly where it's very large surgery which has high risks, and where you may have medical problems that are long-term, long-existing, where we need to know what we need to optimize in order to get you through surgery, and to allow you to have all the right positions and things in place for you to be able to get through surgery. In pre-operative assessment clinic, you will see a pre-optive assessment nurse, you will see many other members of staff of pre-op assessment anesthetists who may be a specialist in that field of surgery that you're undergoing. And in the pre-optive period, you will also have seen your surgeon because of course they are making a decision with you to undergo surgery and what type of surgery that will be.