Aldrete's scoring system is a commonly used scale for determining when postsurgical patients can be safely discharged from the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU), generally to a second stage (phase II) recovery area, hospital ward, or home.
It was devised in 1970[1] by Jorge Antonio Aldrete [de], a Mexican anesthesiologist, while working at the Denver Veterans Affairs Hospital.
The original scoring system was developed before the invention of pulse oximetry and used the patient's colouration as a surrogate marker of their oxygenation status.
A modified Aldrete scoring system was described in 1995[2] which replaces the assessment of skin colouration with the use of pulse oximetry to measure SpO2.
50bpm or >110bpm or with a change in ECG rhythm must be evaluated by an anaesthesiologist.
These additional points change the overall target score.