10 Scores, scoring and outcome: Correlation between pre-operative assessment and post-operative morbidity and mortality of non-hospitalized and hospitalized patients

Anaesthetists are occupied with the possibility of complications during the peri-operative period. All previously published proposals have attempted to estimate the pre-operative state of the patient in order to be able to judge the risk of the impending anaesthetic treatment more reliably. In this chapter we describe the predictive value of the most common anaesthetic classification systems. The prediction of the ASA grade, the Goldman cardiac risk index, the Mannheim checklist and the Munich checklist for peri-operative complications are analysed. Furthermore, we give an overview of the extensive literature of the risk classification in anaesthesia in the different medicine compartments with a special view on ambulatory patients.