Highlights the importance of careful medical evaluation prior to surgery to improve patient outcomes.
Preoperative evaluation may warrant protocol consideration; leaves open need for prospective trials to confirm outcome benefits.
Evaluation of the patient about to undergo operation is a responsibility the surgeon often wishes to share with the internist. Careful and critical appraisal is of inestimable value in accomplishing the primary objective—a living patient who has been benefited by his operation. This paper reviews some of the problems, foreknowledge of which will help toward that objective.
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Lloyd S. Ralston (1959) studied this question.
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