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Managing BP Before Surgery


Joint Guidelines from the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Hypertension Society – March 2016

This is a consensus document produced by members of a Working Party established by the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) and the British Hypertension Society (BHS). It has been seen and approved by the AAGBI Board of Directors and the BHS Executive. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Date of review: 2020.

This guideline aims to ensure that patients admitted to hospital for elective surgery are known to have blood pressures below 160 mmHg systolic and 100 mmHg diastolic in primary care. The objective for primary care is to fulfil this criterion before referral to secondary care for elective surgery. The objective for secondary care is to avoid spurious hypertensive measurements. Secondary care should not attempt to diagnose hypertension in patients who are normotensive in primary care. Patients who present to pre-operative assessment clinics without documented primary care blood pressures should proceed to elective surgery if clinic blood pressures are below 180 mmHg systolic and 110 mmHg diastolic.

To access the full online article, please click here.

NB  This guideline was published before the Society changed its name to incorporate Ireland.