Perioperative steroid management in patients taking chronic corticosteroids

This review summarizes the evidence to date.

A few highlights from the text:

Recent data suggest that stress-dose steroids may not be necessary, even in patients with confirmed preoperative secondary HPAA suppression.12 Instead, these patients may be maintained on their usual preoperative dose and treated with rescue dose steroids only if refractory hypotension presents in the perioperative period.5,10,17 Nonetheless, some authors advocate for the administration of stress-dose steroids for at-risk patients despite the lack of class A and B evidence given the rare, but possibly fatal, consequences of adrenal crisis.10,13 Indeed, the recent 2016 Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline 6 on primary adrenal insufficiency notes that harm has not been shown from recommended doses of perioperative stress-dose steroids and thus places a higher value on preventing adrenal crisis rather than reducing the potential adverse effects of short-term overtreatment.21