Author: Megan Rolfzen, MD
IARS 2026 Annual Meeting coverage
Digital health tools are expanding perioperative care beyond the operating room and hospital walls. At the 2026 IARS and SOCCA Annual Meeting, experts discussed how teleconsultation, wearable monitoring, virtual wards, and home-based postoperative care may improve safety while reducing travel, costs, and unnecessary hospital visits.
David MacDonald, MD, FRCPC, reviewed virtual preoperative anesthesia assessments. Telemedicine use increased dramatically after the COVID-19 pandemic, creating an opportunity to replace some in-person clinic visits with remote consultations.
The TELANESTH randomized noninferiority trial found no meaningful difference between virtual and in-person preoperative consultations in surgical cancellation rates or immediate perioperative complications. Virtual visits may also reduce patient travel, time away from work, financial costs, and stress.
The ongoing VIRTUAL study is examining whether digital preoperative pathways affect more significant outcomes, including morbidity and mortality within 90 days after surgery.
David Brealey, MD, addressed gaps in hospital ward monitoring. In many health systems, vital signs are recorded only one to four times daily, potentially allowing clinical deterioration to go undetected between observations.
Virtual wards may use wearable devices to continuously measure:
- Heart rate
- Respiratory rate
- Oxygen saturation
- Blood pressure
- Temperature
Continuous monitoring could identify deterioration earlier than intermittent bedside measurements. However, these technologies must be validated in high-acuity patients and effectively integrated into existing hospital systems.
Dr. Brealey cautioned that enthusiasm for wearable monitoring currently exceeds the strength of the available evidence. Successful implementation will require reliable devices, clear response protocols, manageable alert volumes, and proof that earlier detection improves patient outcomes.
Sylvie Aucoin, MD, MSc, FRCPC, discussed Postoperative Virtual Care and Remote Monitoring. Earlier hospital discharge has created a significant gap during the first days of recovery, when patients may develop complications without immediate access to their surgical team.
The PVC-RAM model extends postoperative care into the patient’s home through:
- Daily symptom surveys
- Photographs of surgical wounds
- Virtual nursing visits
- Remote vital-sign monitoring
- Procedure-specific recovery pathways
- Direct communication with the clinical team
The intensity and duration of monitoring can be adjusted according to procedural risk. A patient undergoing a lower-risk gynecologic procedure may receive approximately three days of follow-up, while patients recovering from lobectomy or cystectomy may receive monitoring equipment and approximately 10 days of intensive virtual care.
Patient acceptance has been encouraging. Older adults generally found the technology manageable and valued the reassurance of having rapid access to clinical support.
Key Takeaways
Virtual preoperative consultations appear capable of replacing selected in-person assessments without increasing immediate complications or cancellation rates. Additional research is needed to determine their effect on longer-term outcomes.
Continuous wearable monitoring may help detect postoperative deterioration earlier, but hospitals must avoid adopting technology solely because it is innovative. Devices must demonstrate clinical accuracy, improve meaningful outcomes, and fit into established workflows.
Postoperative virtual-care programs may close the safety gap created by earlier discharge. Their success depends on engaged surgeons, trained virtual nurses, administrative support, reliable escalation procedures, and coordination with home health professionals and paramedics.
These technologies may help establish postoperative care as a more prominent component of anesthesiology. By participating in recovery after discharge, anesthesiologists can extend their role from intraoperative management to comprehensive perioperative stewardship.
Thank you to IARS for allowing us to summarize this important coverage from the 2026 Annual Meeting.