Strategies for Patient Assessment and Scheduling

To safely deliver anesthesia in developing countries, investments for appropriate training are required. The lack of human and material resources causes specific problems and requires specific solutions. In particular, as non-physician anesthetists are in charge of a great part of the perioperative patient care, some steps and in particular preoperative assessment may not be thorough enough; however, it is an essential part of risk evaluation. For preoperative assessment, knowledge of co-existing medical conditions and adequate preparation by non-physician anesthetists is required. The existence of endemic and sometimes serious pre-existent medical conditions has to be ruled out for it is sometimes unknown to the patient himself and might require specific care previous to surgery. In that regard, the development and organization of medical records should be in place. Eventually, scheduling the surgery should be done after taking into account all these elements in order to deliver anesthesia as safely as possible.