[Anesthesia and intensive care in cardiac surgery. Activity at the French centers in 1982].

A national survey was carried out to inquire about the practice of anaesthesia and surgical intensive care in cardiac surgery in French hospitals. In 1982, 15,797 surgical procedures with cardiopulmonary bypass were collected; 1,360 and 555 were performed in children and infants respectively. Coronary surgery accounted for 46% of the total. For the same time interval, 2,554 operations without cardiopulmonary bypass were done. Postoperative care was supervised by anaesthesiologists in most of the French centres. The duration of stay of patients in intensive care units increased as the unit's activity decreased. With the exception of arterial blood pressure monitoring, there was no consensus on the method or the extent of monitoring of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. A Swan-Ganz catheter was only used in 18% of cases. Neuroleptanalgesia was the anaesthetic technique most often used.