Dr. Daniel Engelman, Associate Professor of Surgery, Medical Director of the Heart, Vascular and Inpatient Service, and Surgical Director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at Baystate Medical Center, authored the “Guidelines for Perioperative Care in Cardiac Surgery” published in the May edition of JAMA Surgery.
The article was viewed over 15,000 times in the first ten days after publication making it one of the most viewed ever in the journal with an Altmetric score in the top 1% of "attention scores.”
Developing guidelines
Dr. Engelman leads the ERAS® (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery) Society committee that developed the guidelines to provide cardiac surgical programs with evidence-based protocols to enhance patient recovery following heart surgery. These guidelines are the first to address the complete perioperative patient journey for cardiac surgical patients.
The goal is to optimize patient care through collaborative discovery, analysis, expert consensus, and dissemination of best practices thereby improving both short and long-term outcomes and decreasing complications and readmissions.
Some of the standardized approaches included in the guidelines are:
- Pre-habilitation to better prepare patients for surgery
- Pathways to manage glucose, fluids, and temperature
- Antifibrinolytic and multimodal anesthesia utilization
- The use of biomarkers and goal-directed fluid therapy to prevent acute kidney injury
These guidelines align with Baystate Health’s mission to improve the total care of our patients with high quality, evidence-based practices. Dr. Engelman felt inspired to publish this work because of our institution’s emphasis on safety and multidisciplinary collaboration.
Citation: Engelman DT, Ben Ali W, Williams JB, et al. Guidelines for Perioperative Care in Cardiac Surgery: Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Society Recommendations. JAMA Surg. Published online May 04, 2019. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2019.1153.