[Cardiac evaluation for non-cardiac surgical patients]

There is no evidence that most of the clinical examinations we prescribe before any surgical operation may be useful to a prognostic evaluation of the patient. Recently, some authors showed that there was no postoperative difference between 2 groups of patients. The 1(st) group had performed many laboratory examinations, the 2(nd) group none at all. Both the surgical operations and the characteristics of the patients may foresee a high, intermediate or low risk. The major clinical complications may be foreseen through tested algorithms. Patients who are at risk of cardiac events should perform tests which may be invasive but may reveal a serious heart disease. In some cases, the patients should have to be submitted to heart surgery before their programmed intervention.