Browse the corpus

Preoperative Laboratory Testing. Obtaining routine preoperative laboratory tests increases health care costs and has been listed, by the Choosing Wisely Campaign, as one of the top 5 practices anesthesiologists should avoid. Routine testing without clinical indication is not cost-effective and could cause harm and unnecessary delays. Abnormal findings are more likely to be false positive and costly to pursue, introduce new risks, and increase anxiety for the patient. Preoperative testing need to be performed only following a targeted history and physical examination, factoring severity of surgery, and comorbidities such that the benefit of the test outweighs risk.

Preoperative Laboratory Testing. Routine preoperative testing is not cost-effective, because it is unlikely to identify significant abnormalities. Abnormal findings from routine testing are more likely to be false positive, are costly to pursue, introduce a new risk, increase the patient's anxiety, and are inconvenient to the patient. Abnormal findings rarely alter the surgical or anesthetic plan, and there is usually no association between perioperative complications and abnormal laboratory results. Incidental findings and false positive results may lead to increased hospital visits and admissions. Preoperative testing needs to be done based on a targeted history and physical examination and the type of surgery.