Progress of artificial intelligence in anesthesia and perioperative medicine

Perioperative medicine is a series of medical activities throughout the perioperative period, including preoperative optimization, intraoperative safety, postoperative rehabilitation, and other activities. Anesthesia is closely integrated with perioperative medicine to guarantee smooth progress of operations, comfortable recovery, and favorable long-term outcome for patients. There are a huge number of clinical data in anesthesia and perioperative medicine, and artificial intelligence (AI) has a powerful ability to analyze and evaluate data; thus, applying AI is a significant advantage in analysis and prediction based on real clinical big data in anesthesia and perioperative medicine. AI has made some progress in the field of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine. This review introduces the most encountered computerized techniques of AI in anesthesiology, main clinical applications themes of AI in anesthesiology, as well as limitations and ethical implications involved in deployment of this technology.