Description

Mortality after surgery is still high and high-risk procedures are associated to high postoperative complication rates. For hemodynamic monitoring, a meta-analysis showed a reduction in mortality and especially for the esophageal Doppler a reduction in postoperative complications. However, the effects reducing mortality and morbidity have to be considered as low. Probably, this is the reason why daily clinical implementation rates of hemodynamic monitoring are low, too.

However, hemodynamic studies only focus on intraoperative optimization, but recent publications suggested that taking preoperative individual hemodynamic values for arterial blood pressure and cardiac index as targets for optimization provides advanced therapeutic options. Lastly, both studies do not provide data about the preoperative values and their changes during the induction of anesthesia.

Our own data confirm that the induction of anesthesia, the establishment of a working epidural and the surgical incision of the abdomen leads to decreased cardiac index and markers of inotropy in otherwise cardiovascular healthy patients. However, the intervention studies and our own data strongly suggest that starting hemodynamic monitoring after the induction of anesthesia or the surgical incision may foreclose that the clinician can guide the hemodynamic therapy towards individualized goals. Additionally, the corrective treatment in this scenario could be different from just vasopressors.

Nevertheless, in contrast to our own data a recent study showed that hypotension in the post-induction period is primarily associated with a decreased vascular tone due to anesthetic agents, suggesting that the appropriate treatment is vasopressors.

A detailed hemodynamic profiling of non-cardiac patients undergoing high-risk cancer surgery prior, during and after the induction of anaesthesia may provide new insights about the effects of anaesthetic drugs, positive pressure ventilation, and changes of sympathetic tone.