Perioperative implications of the patient with autonomic dysfunction.

Purpose Of Review: The autonomic nervous system functions to control heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, gastrointestinal motility, hormone release, and body temperature on a second-to-second basis. Here we summarize some of the latest literature on autonomic dysfunction, focusing primarily on the perioperative implications.

Recent Findings: The variety of autonomic dysfunction now extends to a large number of clinical conditions in which the cause or effect of the autonomic component is blurred.