The patient is visited pre-operatively both to assess their fitness for anaesthesia, to decide the best means of anaesthesia, and to explain the course of the anaesthesia.
Important points in the history include:
- existing cardiorespiratory disease:
- particularly the limitation of function, e.g. distance can walk
- a standardized set of screening questions for undiagnosed conditions, e.g. chest pain, shortness of breath
- intercurrent medical conditions:
- diabetes
- rheumatic fever
- epilepsy
- jaundice
- rheumatoid arthritis
- existing medication
- allergies
- past admissions to hospital, operations, dental procedures - caps, bridges or reactions to anaesthetic, any recent general anaesthetic or "awareness" while under general anaesthesia
- family history:
- relative with poor anaesthetic history
- cholinesterase problems
- sickle cell disease or trait
- porphyria
- dystrophia myotonica
- malignant hyperpyrexia
- social history:
- smoking
- alcohol intake
- drug abuse
- likelihood of pregnancy