What is the role of pulmonary consultant in providing clearance for surgery?

• To identify the severity of pulmonary function and estimate the risk of postop complications.
• To identify and treat correctable factors eg infection, bronchospasm etc

DO NOT recommend type of anaesthesia. Let the anaesthesiologist make that decision.

• For emergency surgery eg perforated stomach surgery will be done without any regard for clearance. Patient will die without the surgery.
• For cosmetic surgery we can make a recommendation against surgery because of increased risk, however patient can probably overrule us
• For surgery that is considered essential eg Cancer breast no severity of pulmonary function will contraindicate surgery. Our role is mainly to treat all correctable factors and estimate the risk for postop complications. Surprisngly most can tolerate surgery as the diaphragm will return to baseline function in 2 weeks.