How to Perform a Preoperative Evaluation 

Jeffrey! It's nice to hear from you. I'm glad the video was helpful - hopefully watching it means that you won't need to consult medicine in the first place! ;)

Personally, I have never once ordered PFTs or a blood gas as part of a preoperative assessment. However - I can easily imagine an anesthesiologist ordering these to provide guidance on intraoperative ventilation. And PFTs in particular, are relevant prior to lung surgery, but at the institutions I've worked out, pre-lung surgery evals are done by pulm and anesthesiology, not hospitalists. I'm not sure how much guidance I can offer re: active pulmonary TB. I'm fortunate that it's never come up, but if it did, it would depend on the urgency of the procedure and I would be highly reliant on the ID consultant's opinion on when the patient was no longer contagious.

I rarely look at NEJM and literally haven't cracked open my admittedly significant outdated version of Harrisons in 15 years (though I just did to check the copyright - 1998!). Excluding preparing teaching materials, the only physical books I look at more than a few times a year are a bound copy of JAMA's Rational Clinical Exam series, and Steve McGee's Evidence Based Physical Diagnosis. You may already be familiar with these resources, but if I wore a white coat or otherwise carried something to the bedside to hold pocket references, I might carry MGH Pocket Medicine (newest edition is scheduled to be published this upcoming September), and the latest Sanford Guide - which is mostly used as an app these days. I don't use apps in the hospital, but UCSF's The Hospitalist Handbook (I think now only available as an app) is supposed to be excellent. As a hospitalist, I find the Journal of Hospital Medicine to be the best and most relevant single journal to read. I don't browse other journals, and only look up articles if I see them discussed on Twitter or if it's directly related to a patient on my service.

@@StrongMed Thank you!