Sharing the care: anesthesiology as part of the perioperative interdisciplinary team

Excerpt

It has been more than 50 years since Beecher and Todd reported an anesthesia-related death rate of 1:1,560,1 which was many times greater than the now accepted anesthesia related mortality of approximately < 1:100,000.2 Unfortunately, the incidence of perioperative mortality remains much higher in comparison. In a meta-analysis for United Nations High Developed Index countries comparing pre-1970 data with that after 1990, the postoperative mortality rate decreased from 10,603 to 1,176 per million while mortality rates solely related to anesthesia declined from 357 to 34 per million.3 While these data illustrate a > 30-fold difference between intraoperative and postoperative mortality, the postoperative mortality rate may be as much as 1,000 times higher if one considers mortality at 30 days.4,5 …