Incidence of Various Comorbidities among Patients Coming for Pre-Anesthetic Checkup in a Secondary Health Care Hospital

Pre -anesthesia checkup (PAC) forms an integral part for every patient undergoing surgery. It is a valuable tool in decreasing the perioperative risk to the patient by preoperative intervention, reducing number of investigations and consultations and reducing perioperative morbidity and mortality. Patients consultation for the surgery is their first contact with the healthcare provider. So we undertook this study to detect the comorbid conditions among patients coming for preanaesthetic evaluation in developing countries have poor access to the healthcare system and it is quite often that in a secondary care hospital. A total of 110 patients were studied over a period of 10 months. Total of 31 patients (28%) had 48 medical conditions requiring further workup. Out of these 48 medical conditions, 29 (60.4 %) were known cases of medical comorbidities, whereas 19 (39.5%) were newly diagnosed at the time of PAC. Most common comorbidities were anemia and hypertension. We conclude that PAC helps in detecting previously unknown comorbidities and thus impacts perioperative management