A pre-anesthesia assessment is the checkup done before anesthesia to learn about your health, plan your anesthesia, and make surgery safer. It usually includes reviewing your medical record, asking about your health history and past anesthesia experiences, doing a focused exam, and checking any needed tests or specialist visits. The anesthesiologist also reviews the anesthesia plan, gets consent, and may order preoperative medicines.

This visit is also used to spot things that could affect your care, such as allergies, medicines you take, other health problems, and any past issues with anesthesia. For planned surgery, it may happen a few weeks or days before surgery, and good practice is more than 2 weeks before when possible so there is time to fix problems and plan ahead.

In plain terms, it is the time when your anesthesia team learns what they need to know so they can choose the safest plan for you and prepare for recovery. Verify the exact plan with your surgical or anesthesia team in case they want something different for you.