prior to selecting the anesthetic or prior to performing surgery.
Describing patients’ preoperative physical status is used for recordkeeping,
for communicating between colleagues, and to create a uniform system
for statistical analysis.
The grading system is not intended for use as a measure to predict operative risk.
ASA PS Category |
Preoperative Health Status | Comments, Examples | |
---|---|---|---|
* ASA-PS classifications from the American Society of Anesthesiologists
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PS 1 | Normal healthy patient |
No organic, physiologic, or psychiatric disturbance; excludes the very young and very old; healthy with good exercise tolerance |
|
PS 2 | Patients with mild systemic disease |
No functional limitations; has a well-controlled disease of one body system; controlled hypertension or diabetes without systemic effects, cigarette smoking without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); mild obesity, pregnancy |
|
PS 3 | Patients with severe systemic disease |
Some functional limitation; has a controlled disease of more than one body system or one major system; no immediate danger of death; controlled congestive heart failure (CHF), stable angina, old heart attack, poorly controlled hypertension, morbid obesity, chronic renal failure; bronchospastic disease with intermittent symptoms |
|
PS 4 |
Patients with severe systemic disease that is a constant threat to life |
Has at least one severe disease that is poorly controlled or at end stage; possible risk of death; unstable angina, symptomatic COPD, symptomatic CHF, hepatorenal failure |
|
PS 5 |
Moribund patients who are not expected to survive without the operation |
Not expected to survive > 24 hours without surgery; imminent risk of death; multiorgan failure, sepsis syndrome with hemodynamic instability, hypothermia, poorly controlled coagulopathy |
|
PS 6 |
A declared brain-dead patient who organs are being removed for donor purposes |