In recent years, sleep medicine has become an important medical subspecialty, with strong links to anesthesiology. The foundations of both specialties are based on an understanding of anatomic and physiologic changes that take place with loss of consciousness.1 Sleep is essential for health and resilience, and poor sleep has significant implications for perioperative management and outcomes. As a result of this common ground, the relationship between sleep medicine and anesthesiology should strengthen over the next decade as anesthesiology's role in perioperative medicine and population health expands.
Because of recent advances in our understanding of sleep, anesthesiologists and sleep medicine physicians have been able to identify new approaches to clinical care, including how to better manage patients with sleep disorders in the perioperative period. Based on advances in our understanding of sleep disorders, anesthesiologists have become more aware of risks associated with management of patients with chronic sleep disorders and...