Fast-Track in Cardiac Anesthesia

After the time we struggled to overcome the many crises that the pandemic period brought to our lives, it has been clearly seen that the decrease in the number of nurses and doctors and the limitation of the number of beds allocated for postoperative intensive care have been mandatory attempts due to the shift of personnel to areas to fight the pandemic. The fact that cardiac surgery operations are not elective and cardiac patients cannot wait for a long time due to their existing pathologies has led physicians to strive to provide the best service with available resources. To ensure that the cardiac surgery operating room and intensive care beds of our hospital can be used more efficiently and to take initiatives to optimize the recovery in the postoperative period are among the important goals of today and the future. The reason for this is not only to reduce costs and loss of workforce but also to be ready for any crisis time. In addition, it is aimed to perform the operations of critical patients without delay and to successfully discharge them. In the postoperative period, if the functions of many basic organ systems can provide the necessary ideal conditions, the patients can be extubated within 8 hours in fast-track cardiac anesthesia (FTCA) programs. Some problems persist or occur in patients with functional problems such as hemodynamics, cardiac, and respiration who do not meet the extubation criteria. For all these reasons, a prospective, cross-sectional study was planned to focus on daily standard practices and improve areas of failure.

Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative characteristics of patients who underwent cardiac surgery, and to investigate the factors in patients who could not be extubated within 8 hours after surgery.

Inclusion criteria

• All adult patients who underwent elective or emergency cardiac surgery

Exclusion criteria

• Patients undergoing pediatric cardiac surgeries