Intraoperative Pressure Injury Prevention

Pressure injury (PI) prevention in the operating room (OR) has unique considerations based on the patient, procedure, position for the surgical procedure, and available positioning devices. Patient-specific factors contribute to their risk of incurring an intraoperative PI from the American Society of Anesthesiologists classification, sex, body mass index, comorbidities, age, and nutritional status. Additionally, there are surgery-specific risk factors such as length of procedure, intraoperative hypotension, lack of normothermia, and intraoperative blood loss. Knowledge of intraoperative PIs and prevention is developing and continues to have room for growth due to the complexity of the OR environment.