This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Theodore C. Smith, MD
Riverside, Ill

JAMA. 1989;261(9):1277.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor. —

I suppose you might be mildly annoyed to have your remarks attributed to the American Manufacturers Association. You will understand my annoyance at finding that your abstractor¹ has invented the American Standards Association as the authority for classification of Physical Status, instead of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, as properly attributed by Gluck et al.² Perhaps in calling their error to attention you will permit yet another correction. The ASA Physical Status is not an anesthetist's evaluation of risk but rather of global function. A patient with coronary artery disease would be assigned the same Physical Status for either a bunionectomy or bypass grafting. The risks of the operation obviously are different. The ASA Physical Status is a comprehensive and significant risk factor but so is the operation. Since sicker patients often require more dangerous surgery than healthy patients (a tautology I admit), Physical . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?