APSF-Endorsed Statement on Revising Recommendations for Patient Monitoring During Anesthesia

The APSF Committee on Technology (COT) has reviewed statements* for patient monitoring during anesthesia care published by a sampling of professional organizations from around the world. Since patient safety during anesthesia is independent of location, the Committee believes that the inconsistencies identifed between the various statements should be addressed and appropriate revisions encouraged. Specifcally, there are gaps between the various statements that have signifcant patient safety implications.1,2 The following recommendations for patient monitoring have been reviewed and approved by the APSF Board of Directors.

The primary goal of this statement is to identify monitoring practices that are not part of existing statements by some professional organizations, but are believed to enhance patient safety. A secondary goal is to foster efforts by professional organizations to harmonize guidelines across all anesthesia professional organizations so that every anesthetized patient can beneft from best monitoring practices.

This statement is not intended to set a monitoring standard. It is based primarily upon expert consensus. The role of expert consensus to setting guidelines that support and enhance clinical practices has been underscored in a recent publication and editorial.3,4 Indeed, the frst standards adopted for patient monitoring were based upon expert consensus and persist to the present day with well accepted impact on reducing anesthesia-related mortality.5 Furthermore, APSF recognizes that the desired approach to monitoring will ultimately be dictated by available resources and resource-limited locations simply may not be able to comply with these recommendations. However, this statement hopefully will help anesthesia professionals advocate for resources to comply with these recommendations when the resources are available.