An audit of postoperative haemodynamic stability after intraoperative labetalol administration in non-cardiac surgery patients.

No control group or comparator was included, so the audit cannot show that labetalol caused no hypotension or that monitoring could be reduced safely. This was a retrospective single-centre audit of consecutive patients over six months, so the rates may not apply to other hospitals or patient groups. Patients who received labetalol infusions, outpatient procedures, and direct ICU admission were excluded, so the results apply only to small IV boluses in patients admitted for more than 24 hours. Floor vital signs were often taken only every four hours, so brief hypotension episodes between readings may have been missed. Many hypotension cases had other causes, and the authors could not fully separate labetalol from surgery, bleeding, anaesthetic effects, or medical events. Eighteen of 310 identified patients were excluded, including five with incomplete charts or missing vitals, which could bias the reported rates.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication.

Do not read the 1.4% rate of unexplained hypotension as proof that small IV labetalol boluses are safe or that postoperative monitoring can be reduced. The audit had no control group, and floor blood pressures were often recorded only every four hours, so it cannot separate labetalol from other causes or capture brief episodes.