What is a multidisciplinary team & how can it help with my surgery?

Any patient undergoing complex surgery, whether this is open aortic surgery, which has high risks, high complications, long length of stay, involves multiple teams in the care of that patient. And other surgeries such as a suffogectomy, so complex upper GI surgery, surgery that may involve more than one specialty team because of the complex needs in terms of cancer patients and cancer surgery, or surgery that is just very complicated, is often discussed in a multidisciplinary team environment. What do I mean by multidisciplinary team? I mean having all of those specialties that will be involved in your care during your hospital stay being represented by that specialty within a group where your scans will be discussed, your investigations will be discussed, your medical care and your medical history will be discussed. We discuss, as a multidisciplinary team, all of your investigations, your scans, all of the blood tests that you may have had. We will discuss your medical history, the reason that you are being discussed in our multidisciplinary team surgical environment, so what the surgery is that is being proposed based on the disease process that you may In this MDT, multidisciplinary team environment, you will have a representative from anaesthetics, from the surgical field, if it involves radiology, interventional radiology, sometimes a pathologist, a lot of nursing staff, and a preoperative or perioperative physician. We will be discussing what your risks and complications may be, what our major concerns are as experts in the field, and how we think you may be able to get through complex surgery, particularly if you have complex medical problems. Having made a decision based on your best interests, we will document that advice and your surgeon or your anaesthetist will then discuss the risks and complications with you as their patient and together as a group come and make a decision as to the appropriate way forward. It is your decision ultimately as to how we go forward but we will advise you as to what the risks and complications are and explain where our concerns lie and what decisions we are making based on those concerns. So we may change the type of surgery you're having because we're concerned about your health and your ability to get through that surgery or we may decide on the type of of anaesthetic that you receive because of other medical problems that you have and our concerns for example are giving you a general anaesthetic and changing that to a regional anaesthetic so having your surgery done under a spinal anaesthetic or epidural or just where we block the nerves to the area where you are having surgery. These will all be discussed within the MDT but with you as well and then we come to a conclusion and go forward from back.