Anesthetic challenges of patients with cardiac comorbidities undergoing major urologic surgery

The cardiac patient undergoing major urologic surgery is a complex case requiring a great attention by the anesthesiologist. Number of this group of patients having to go through this procedure is constantly increasing, due to prolonged life, increased agressiveness of surgery and increased anesthesia’s safety. The anesthesiologist usually has to deal with several problems of the patient, such as hypertension, chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease, rhythm disturbances, intraoperative hemodymanic changes, intraoperative bleeding, perioperative fluid imbalance, and metabolic disturbances. A cardiac patient undergoing major urologic surgery is a complex case requiring a great attention by the anesthesiologist. The scope of this review article is to present the most frequent issues encountered with this group of patients, and to synthetically discuss the respective strategies and maneuvers during perioperative period, which is the major challenge for the anesthesiologist.