Complex General Anaesthesia and Major Surgery
Anaesthesia across frailty, comorbidity, major abdominal, urological, gynaecological and orthopaedic surgery, including day-case selection and recovery.
How to prepare for the current Final FRCA Written
Protect breadth for the 90 SBA paper, then rehearse concise CRQ answers that follow the command, mark allocation and printed answer lines.
Core concepts
Concept 1
A defensible anaesthetic plan connects patient reserve, surgical burden, positioning, blood loss, postoperative destination and the patient's goals.
Exam cue: Frame each case as patient factors, procedure factors, options, chosen plan and contingency.
Concept 2
Technique choice is less important than showing how monitoring, analgesia, fluid strategy, temperature control and rescue plans address the dominant risks.
Exam cue: State how the plan changes for frailty, organ dysfunction, anticoagulation or anticipated major blood loss.
Risk pitfalls and guardrails
Listing techniques without explaining why one best fits the patient and operation.
Guardrail: Answer the exact lead-in or command instead of reproducing a generic essay.
Treating immediate recovery as the endpoint instead of planning ward, enhanced-care or critical-care needs.
Guardrail: Answer the exact lead-in or command instead of reproducing a generic essay.
Memory anchors
What makes a major-surgery plan complete?
Assessment, optimisation, consent, monitoring, technique, analgesia, fluids and blood, complication plans and postoperative destination.
How should frailty change planning?
Use it to inform shared decisions, realistic benefit, delirium and functional risk, medication review and the level of postoperative support.
What should a blood-loss plan contain?
Anticipated loss, access and monitoring, blood availability, haemostatic strategy, warming, targets, escalation and communication.
Why plan analgesia before induction?
It allows a multimodal, procedure- and patient-specific strategy with contraindications, rescue options and follow-up considered early.
What closes the perioperative loop?
Defined recovery goals, handover, surveillance for expected complications and a clear escalation destination.
Checkpoint rule
Do the check-up only after you can summarize each concept in one sentence and identify one dangerous pitfall from memory.
Knowledge Check (after reading)
Short check-up to confirm understanding of this module.
Check-up Questions
A frail 84-year-old with limited exercise tolerance is listed for elective hemicolectomy. Which preoperative finding most strongly supports planned postoperative critical-care admission?
During laparoscopic surgery, peak airway pressure rises immediately after steep Trendelenburg positioning. What is the most likely mechanism?
Answer all questions to submit.
Next step personalized recommendations
Continue learning
Move forward only after this module is stable.
What is Pass Harbor?
Completely free exam prep for 247 UK exams.
- Practice questions
- Flashcards
- Study guides
- Mock exams
- No registration
- No paywall
- Start instantly
“No more expensive exam prep. Quality study tools should be accessible to everyone.”