Guidelines: Anaesthesia in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT Objectives: The world is currently facing an unprecedented healthcare crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of these guidelines is to produce a framework to facilitate the partial and gradual resumption of intervention activity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The group has endeavoured to produce a minimum number of recommendations to highlight the strengths to be retained in the 7 predefined areas: (1) Protection of staff and patients; (2) Benefit/Risk and Patient Information; (3) Pre-operative assessment and decision on intervention; (4) Modalities of the pre-anaesthesia consultation; (5) Specificity of anaesthesia and analgesia; (6) Dedicated circuits and (7) Containment Exit Type of Interventions. Results: The SFAR Guideline panel provides 51 statements on anaesthesia management in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. After one round of discussion and various amendments, a strong agreement was reached for 100% of the recommendations and algorithms. Conclusion: We present suggestions for how the risk of transmission by and to anaesthetists can be minimised and how personal protective equipment policies relate to COVID-19 pandemic context