Careful pre-operative assessment and holistic multidisciplinary management are important for addressing the complex medical issues of rheumatoid arthritis patients undergoing surgery.
Reinforces perioperative optimization in RA; leaves open prospective trials to define optimal protocols.
The pre-operative assessment is used to clarify issues prior to surgery that can change management provided by a multidisciplinary team. A high proportion of rheumatoid arthritis patients are elderly requiring orthopaedic surgery which requires further investigations, assessment of risk through functional capacity and several anaesthetic considerations. Rheumatoid arthritis patients often provide a variety of medical issues that can be found on careful and thorough pre-assessment that can be accommodated for by the surgical and anaesthetic team, however aspects of holistic management is an important considerations for efficient and effective management.
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Seyoum et al. (2016) studied this question.
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