What do I need to tell my anesthesiologist before surgery?

What do I need to tell my anesthesiologist before surgery?

When you meet your anaesthesiologist in the pre-operative area, it's important that you give a complete history and answer the questions that he poses to you. For example, he may first ask you "What prior surgeries have you had?" and specifically if you've had any problems with the anaesthetics that were given to you. Any patient that's had a problem in the past, we would investigate that thoroughly to make sure that we don't reproduce that problem. It may be an allergy or an adverse reaction to a particular medication. We need to know the list of medications that the patient is on, because many medications will react with some of the aesthetic agents that we use and it could dictate which medications we do or do not use. It's important for us to know the medical history; chest pains, shortness of breath, cardiac status of the patient. We like to know their exercise tolerance. I frequently ask a patient, "Do you have stairs in your home? Are you able to navigate those stairs?" That gives a pretty good indication of the conditioning of the patients, even if they're elderly. Certain diseases make anaesthesia difficult. In addition to morbid obesity, asthma, coronary artery disease, those sorts of problems we need to know about in advance.