ESA Guidelines

The Guidelines Committee has recently established two Task Forces, the Task Force on pre-operative evaluation and the Task Force on pre-operative fasting to work on the elaboration of two guidelines.

These guideline topics were approved by the Guidelines Committee and the ESA Board after a consultation process within the subcommittees of the ESA Scientific Programme Committee. The task forces are made up of anaesthesiologists nominated by the subcommittee chairs to include expertise from the necessary scientific fields. These individuals are complemented by others with particular interest and enthusiasm both as task force members and part of a wider advisory group. 

A survey of National Societies of Anaesthesiology within Europe has been conducted to identify existing guidelines on the two chosen topics. The draft guidelines will be sent out for comment in due course. The Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group, the international experts in evidence handling, will perform the literature searches and appraisal of papers. The task force experts will then be able to draw on this preliminary work to produce scientifically robust recommendations for clinical practice. 

The production of high-quality, evidence-based guidelines will take some time but should be completed in the first half of 2011, ready for publication in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and launching at the Euroanaesthesia meeting that year.

Guideline on pre-operative evaluation 

The pre-operative evaluation guideline will cover the following areas:

  • General principles of preoperative evaluation and preparation for surgery 
  • Role of patient history and clinical examination 
  • Role of preoperative tests in evaluation 
  • Personnel performing evaluation: physician vs. others 
  • Managing concurrent medication: continuing/discontinuing 
  • Airway evaluation 
  • Cardiovascular system: arterial hypertension, coronary artery disease, coronary stents, heart failure, valve disease 
  • Respiratory system: asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, recent infection 
  • Endocrine: diabetes mellitus, corticosteroid therapy 
  • Lifestyle factors: cigarette smoking, excess alcohol intake, obesity 
  • Anaemia

Guideline on pre-operative fasting

The pre-operative fasting guideline will cover the following areas: 

  • Preoperative fasting - solids
  • Preoperative fasting - fluids
  • Use of prokinetic drugs
  • Special circumstances: children, the elderly, obstetrics and the emergency/trauma patient


Benefits of ESA Guidelines Committee activities

  • To make available a European guideline to be used by individual ESA members and adopted, with any desired modifications, by national societies of anaesthesiology for their own national use, if they so wish.
  • Harmonisation of clinical management of anaesthesiology, perioperative medicine and related clinical areas throughout Europe
  • Improvement of standards of care throughout Europe 



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