Safety of a Novel Obstructive Sleep Apnea Triage Tool for Postoperative Orthopedic Surgery Patients.

Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project is to provide a tool for effective and safe triage of postoperative patients in the postanesthesia care unit with known or suspected obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) at an academic orthopedic hospital in New York City.

Design: The structure of this project was observational after implementation of a novel OSA triage tool.

Methods: Results were reported from a single center experience in a hospital where there was no existing standard assessment tool consistently used to triage patients with either known or suspected OSA in the postoperative period. Adult patients who underwent orthopedic surgery between October 2018 and February 2020 and who had a known or suspected history of OSA were included. After admission to the postanesthesia care unit (PACU) and upon meeting their modified Aldrete criteria or after 2 hours had elapsed, the PACU primary provider used the OSA triage tool to assess whether the patient had a high or low risk of respiratory deterioration after discharge from the PACU related to OSA. Patients without high-risk criteria were discharged from the PACU to a medical/surgical unit. For patients with high-risk criteria, the PACU provider requested critical care consultation to determine each patient's appropriate hospital disposition upon PACU discharge.

Findings: Over the course of the study period, 216 patients were evaluated using the OSA triage tool: 53.2% of the cohort was male, median BMI was 36.3 kg/m, and 80.1% had a prior diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. Patients underwent a variety of orthopedic surgeries with 23.6% having undergone hip surgery, 51.4% knee surgery, 13.4% spine surgery, 9.7% shoulder surgery, and 1.9% foot or ankle surgery. Notably, with the use of this tool, only 12.5% of patients met criteria for critical care consult and 91.7% were admitted to the floor from the PACU. Rapid response for respiratory complications were not observed in any of the patients. There were only three patients who required critical care evaluation after PACU discharge. An anonymous survey completed by PACU nurse practitioners and anesthesiologists revealed a 96.8% self-reported satisfaction with OSA triage tool.

Conclusion: We demonstrated that use of a OSA triage tool in the single-center orthopedic PACU at NYULH is potentially a safe and effective method of triaging patients with known or suspected OSA to acute care beds versus higher levels of care.