Postoperative circuits in patients undergoing elective craniotomy. A narrative review

In 2017, the Neurosciences section of the Spanish Society of Anaesthesiology, CriticalCare and Pain Therapy published a national survey on postoperative care and treatment circuitsin neurosurgery. The survey showed that practices vary widely, depending on the centre, theanaesthesiologist and the pathology of the patient. There is currently no standard postoperativecircuit for cranial neurosurgical procedures in Spanish hospitals, and there is sufficient evidenceto show that not all patients undergoing elective craniotomy should be routinely admitted toa postsurgical critical care unit. The aim of this study is to perform a narrative review ofpostoperative circuits in elective craniotomy in order to standardise clinical practice in thelight of published studies. For this purpose, we searched MEDLINE (PubMed) to retrieve studiespublished in the last ten years, up to November 2019, using the keywords neurosurgery andpostoperative care, craniotomy and postoperative care. (c) 2020 Sociedad Espanola de Anestesiolog ' ia, Reanimaci ' on y Terap ' eutica del Dolor. Publishedby Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. All rights reserved.