This piece looks at some of the advantages to having a perioperative interdisciplinary team reducing complications, understanding and discussing risk, facilitating better shared decision making and increased patient satisfaction, even among those who - as part of this process - decide not to go ahead with an operation.

It also incorporates evidence regarding what we know about COVID-19; "The risks ... of the COVID-19 virus is that if people contract it during or after their surgery, they have a much worse result with perhaps 51% pulmonary complications or 24% mortality".

The World Health Organisation report mentioned in this piece, "Smoking greatly increases risk of complications after surgery", is here: https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2020-smoking-greatly-increases-risk-of-complications-after-surgery

The Montgomery ruling is covered on a previous TopMedTalk in more detail in "Sunday Special | Being on the right side of the law" here: https://www.topmedtalk.com/sunday-special-being-on-the-right-side-of-the-law-2/

The Centre for Perioperative Care website is an excellent resource, here is the section specifically for your patients: https://www.cpoc.org.uk/patients

The Royal College of Surgeons is here: https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/

Our presenter has a website dedicated to her work here: http://www.scarlettmcnally.co.uk/

And she maintains a twitter feed - focused on medical issues - here: https://twitter.com/scarlettmcnally

Presented by Scarlett McNally, Deputy Director of The Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Eastbourne DGH, UK.