Monitoring the plastic surgical patient

Monitoring has now developed to the extent that it is widely accepted if used properly and that it benefits patients at great risk. We must accept the place that monitoring now occupies, as aptly put by the late Myron Laver, "What we once considered appropriate for the academic environment has now become mundane and almost a mandatory maneuver if we are to navigate the ill through their complex physiological and biochemical perturbations. We are no longer limited to the recording of heart sounds and electrical activity." We now have the capabilities of monitoring physiologic parameters that can affect the course of the surgical patient. When applied with logic based on physical and historic information, invasive and noninvasive hemodynamic-pulmonary monitoring can be extremely helpful to the practicing plastic surgeon.