Perioperative blood management strategies include evidence-based guidelines to efficiently manage blood products and transfusions while minimizing blood loss and improving patient outcomes. Perioperative Medicine has made evident that anemia is often under-recognized and not appropriately addressed prior to surgery. Early recognition and correction of anemia is imperative for better surgical optimization, fewer transfusions perioperatively, and improved outcomes. Patient blood management utilize evidence-based guidelines for the establishment of a framework to promote treatment of the causes of anemia, reduce blood loss and coagulopathy as well as to improve patient safety and outcomes by efficiently managing blood products, decrease complications associated with blood transfusions and reduce overall costs. Both liberal and restrictive strategies for blood transfusions established thresholds for hemoglobin: restrictive transfusion threshold of hemoglobin 7–8 g/dL in stable patients, and a higher transfusion threshold of hemoglobin > 8 g/dL may be considered in patients with cardiac disease. Intraoperatively, tests such as viscoelastic testing, including rotational thromboelastometry and thrombelastography, offer real-time analysis of a patient’s clotting ability, allowing for targeted transfusions of fresh frozen plasma, platelets, cryoprecipitate or antifibrinolytic drugs. Complications associated with blood transfusions include allergic reactions, delayed hemolytic reactions, transfusion related acute lung injury, transfusion-associated circulatory overload, and the transmission of infectious diseases such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and Human-immunodeficiency virus. This review will discuss the management of blood products for surgical patients in the entire perioperative setting, with specific considerations for the peri-, intra- and post-operative stages.

Biomedical sciences have made immense progress and numerous discoveries aimed at improving the quality of life and life expectancy in modern times. Anesthesiology is typically tailored to individual patients as its clinical effects depend on multiple factors, including a patient’s physiological and pathological states, age, environmental exposures, and genetic variations. Sex differences are also paramount for a complete understanding of the effects of specific anesthetic medications on men and women. However, women-specific research and the inclusion of women in clinical trials, specifically during child-bearing years, remain disproportionately low compared to the general population at large. This review describes and summarizes genetic variations, including sex differences, that affect responses to common anesthetic medications such as volatile anesthetics, induction agents, neuromuscular blocking drugs, opioids, and local anesthetics. It also discusses the influence of genetic variations on anesthesia outcomes, such as postoperative nausea and vomiting, allergic reactions, pain, depth of anesthesia, awareness under anesthesia and recall, and postoperative delirium.

Biomedical sciences have made immense progress and numerous discoveries aimed at improving quality of life and life expectancy in modern times. Anesthesiology is typically tailored to individual patients as its clinical effects depend on multiple factors, including a patient’s physiological and pathological states, age, environmental exposures and genetic variations. Sex differences are also paramount for a complete understanding of the effects of specific anesthetic medications on men and women. However, women-specific research and the inclusion of women in clinical trials, specifically during child-bearing years, remain disproportionately low compared to the general population at large. This review describes and summarizes genetic variations, including sex differences, that affect responses to common anesthetic medications such as volatile anesthetics, induction agents, neuromuscular blocking drugs, opioids and local anesthetics. It also discusses the influence of genetic variations on anesthesia outcomes such as post-operative nausea and vomiting, allergic reactions, pain, depth of anesthesia, awareness under anesthesia and recall, and post-operative delirium.

The prevalence of patients on buprenorphine therapy presenting for elective surgery has increased. Buprenorphine is a widely used medication for the management of patients with chronic pain. It is also used as maintenance therapy for patients with a history of opioid use disorder (OUD). Due to the lack of a standardized protocol for managing patients on buprenorphine perioperatively, we performed a retrospective analysis to compare pain score outcomes and postoperative opiate requirements between patients who continued buprenorphine versus patients who discontinued buprenorphine. We identified 35 patients: 11 continued buprenorphine and 24 discontinued buprenorphine. The average Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) pain score was 5.59 for those who continued buprenorphine and 7.54 for those who discontinued preoperative buprenorphine (p value 0.0339). The average postoperative morphine milligram equivalent (MME) use was 86.13 for those who continued preoperative buprenorphine and 107.70 for those who discontinued buprenorphine (p value 0.6439). The results from our study correlate with several previous studies, which showed lower PACU pain scores in patients who continued buprenorphine. There is a benefit of decreased postoperative pain when preoperative buprenorphine is continued, and a decreased possibility for relapse in those with a history of OUD.

Background: The operating room (OR) is a dynamic environment requiring close communication between surgeons, anesthesiologists, and clinicians. First-case on-time starts (FCOTS) is a common metric of OR efficiency. OR delays are multifactorial and can increase hospital expenditures. Purpose: We sought to determine whether implementing explicit deadlines, in conjunction with feedback to late individuals, would improve our institution's FCOTS. Methods: After obtaining approval from quality board at our tertiary care, Level 1 trauma institution, a “pre versus post” quality improvement project implemented a multicomponent initiative with explicit deadlines for perioperative tasks, feedback to late surgeons, and OR tracking boards. We included American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification score ≤4 patients, undergoing elective or urgent surgery. Results: A total of 14,609 patients were included (6,635 preimplementation and 7,974 postimplementation). Both groups were well balanced regarding most potential confounders, for example, age, sex, and ASA score. We observed a significant difference ( p < .0001) in FCOTS between the preimplementation (39.0%) and postimplementation (74.0%) phases. Using a 5-minute grace period, the monthly average FCOTS percentage increased from 54.8% preimplementation to 83.2% postimplementation ( p < .0001). Conclusions: Implementation of a central OR tracking board, clinician feedback, and explicit 5:10:15:20-minute goals was associated with significant improvement of our hospital's FCOTS.