There and Back Again: The Patient’s Journey Through Perioperative and Interventional Respiratory Care

This Research Topic aims to bridge the gap between isolated perioperative subspecialties by inviting contributions that follow the patient across the entire arc of their surgical and procedural experience. The central question driving this collection is not “how did the procedure go?” but “did the patient make it back — and how well?”We seek to consolidate evidence linking preoperative risk assessment and functional optimization to intraoperative ventilatory and anesthetic strategies, and ultimately to postoperative outcomes including pulmonary complications, length of stay, mortality, and patient-reported recovery. Special emphasis is placed on high-risk subgroups — frail patients, those with chronic respiratory disease, and candidates for thoracic or complex interventional procedures — in whom the integration of care across the perioperative continuum is most likely to influence outcome.The perioperative period represents a critical continuum of care, spanning from the first clinical encounter before surgery to the patient’s return to daily life. Despite substantial advances in anesthesia and critical care, perioperative morbidity and mortality remain significant, particularly in patients undergoing thoracic procedures or those with pre-existing cardiopulmonary conditions. Concurrently, the field of interventional respiratory medicine has expanded rapidly, with complex bronchoscopic and endoscopic procedures increasingly performed under sedation or general anesthesia, often in patients with severely compromised respiratory function. A fragmented, stage-by-stage approach to perioperative management — in which preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care are handled in silos — fails to capture the systemic nature of surgical stress and its downstream effects on functional recovery and quality of life.Contributions are welcome at any stage of the perioperative journey. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to: preoperative evaluation and cardiopulmonary risk stratification; frailty assessment and prehabilitation; shared decision-making before high-risk procedures; intraoperative lung-protective ventilation and hemodynamic management; anesthesia for operative bronchoscopy, endobronchial valve placement, and EBUS; one-lung ventilation and anesthetic considerations in thoracic surgery; postoperative pulmonary complications and their predictors; ICU-to-ward transitions and early rehabilitation; and patient-reported outcomes, functional recovery, and return to baseline activity. We welcome original research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, clinical trials, and expert perspectives. Multidisciplinary submissions spanning anesthesiology, pulmonology, thoracic surgery, and critical care are particularly encouraged. Topic editors: Marco Rispoli, Jakob Wittenstein, Federico Piccioni Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84117/there-and-back-again-the-patients-journey-through-perioperative-and-interventional-respiratory-care