THE WORKING AGENDA

THREE TRACKS

Each track runs as a small facilitated group and produces one section of the summary paper.
Applicants indicate a first and second choice.

01. The Preoperative View – Sleep Health Vulnerability In Identification, Risk Prediction, and Response

Modernizing SASM’s founding domain. How should patients with any sleep health need—including those already on medications or devices—be identified, optimized before surgery, and if needed, qualified for subsequent treatment?

• Sleep Health Risk. What issues are inadequately identified upon admission that contribute to risks and remain unresolved? Which patients need enhanced identification and subsequent monitoring, and what changes for ambulatory surgery patients should be undertaken using current and emerging diagnostic and therapeutic modalities?
• Data integration. How can use of existing electronic data mining and patient wearables and CPAP adherence data sharpen risk assessment at the point of decision?
• What’s next. What new pre-operative evaluation paradigm can be constructed to identify ways to reduce risk and patient needs for customized peri-operative treatment plans? What evidence is needed to do new monitoring, treatment, and rapid treatment qualification pathways? What replaces the apnea–hypopnea index as a perioperative risk metric? Where does AI actually help?

02. Anesthetics, Sleep, and Circadian Biology – Leveraging Anesthetics to Improve Brain Health and Recovery

Anesthesia and sleep share circuitry, yet we understand very little about what general anesthesia does to sleep architecture and circadian timing in the days after surgery—or whether that explains part of postoperative delirium, pain, and slow recovery. We also ask whether these shared pathways can be intentionally used for therapeutic benefit.

• Sleep physiology and anesthesia. How do anesthetic agents act on sleep–wake circuitry through consciousness, emergence, and recovery? Can EEG-guided anesthesia be steered toward genuinely restorative states rather than merely unconscious ones?
• Brain health and recovery. Does protecting sleep physiology improve postoperative brain health? Can sleep- or circadian-targeted interventions reduce delirium, pain, and delayed recovery (i.e should time of day, light exposure, and preoperative sleep regularity factor into surgical scheduling and recovery protocols?)—and what trial designs would prove it?

03. Technology, Translation, and Industry Innovation

Perioperative sleep technology has outrun its evidence base. Wearables, home sleep testing, PAP cloud data, remote monitoring, digital phenotyping, and AI-based prediction are available now — but almost none of it has the validation, workflow integration, or reimbursement pathway required to change care at scale

• Evidence and validation. What evidence do new monitoring and prediction technologies need in order to influence practice and enter guidelines? What study designs generate it, and who runs them?
• Technology gaps. Where are the real gaps across the perioperative pathway — monitoring tools, data dashboards, physiologic signals for sleep quality and recovery — and which are tractable within three years?
• From pilot to standard of care. What blocks implementation: EHR integration, interoperability, clinician workflow, regulatory pathway, or reimbursement? What does each barrier actually require?