Article: Preoperative evaluation: step by step: identifying patients at higher risk for mortality and morbidity during the perioperative period can lead to strategies to minimize those risks.

A thorough preoperative cardiac evaluation uses a stepwise approach and various tools to identify patients at risk of a cardiac event. Interventions designed to prevent perioperative mortality and morbidity as well as intensive intraoperative monitoring can be recommended for high-risk patients. Since cardiac events pose the most serious risk to patients, most preoperative evaluation strategies attempt to quantify risk for perioperative MI and sudden death.

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The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association developed a clinical practice guideline that was published in 1996 and updated in 2002(1) and 2007. (2) ...

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