Anesthesia management of thoracic surgery in a patient with suspected/confirmed COVID-19: Interim Saudi Anesthesia Society guidelines

Abdelazeem Eldawlatly; Mohamed R El Tahan; Ahmed Abdulmomen; Maan Kattan; Abdulaziz E Ahmad

doi:10.4103/sja.SJA_252_20

Anesthesia management of thoracic surgery in a patient with suspected/confirmed COVID-19: Interim Saudi Anesthesia Society guidelines

Saudi J Anaesth. 2020 Jul-Sep;14(3):383-386. doi: 10.4103/sja.SJA_252_20. Epub 2020 Apr 17.

Authors

Abdelazeem Eldawlatly¹, Mohamed R El Tahan², Ahmed Abdulmomen¹, Maan Kattan³, Abdulaziz E Ahmad¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesia, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
² Department of Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
³ Department of Anesthesiology, King Abdulaziz Medical City, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

The Saudi Anesthesia Society (SAS) has developed interim guidelines on perioperative care of COVID-19 patients who undergo surgery and anesthesia.[1] Patients with "suspected/confirmed" COVID-19 might be scheduled for emergency thoracic procedures either during the acute or convalescence phases of the disease. There is a demanding need to develop the SAS recommendations on the perioperative care of thoracic surgery patients during the COVID-19 outbreak. There are no relevant publications on perioperative care of thoracic surgery in COVID-19 patients. These recommendations were developed from the previous experience of management of patients during the MERS-CoV outbreak in 2012-2013 and literature available on the general airway and anesthesia care for patients with COVID-19, SARS, MERS-CoV.

Keywords: Anesthesia; COVID-19; thoracic surgery.