ASA Physical Status Classification System - Uses

Uses

While anesthesia providers use this scale to indicate the patient's overall physical health or "sickness" preoperatively, it is regarded by hospitals, law firms, accrediting boards and other health care groups as a scale to predict risk, and thus decide if a patient should have – or should have had – an operation. To predict operative risk, age and obesity of the patient, the nature and severity of the operative procedure, selection of anesthetic techniques, the competency of the surgical team (surgeon, anesthesia providers and assisting staff), duration of surgery or anesthesia, availability of equipment, medicine, blood, implants and especially the level of post-operative care etc. are often far more important than multiple ASA classification.