Additional Study Information: We are asking you to participate in a research study to learn if different ways of doing routine anesthesia and patient care before, during and after abdominal surgery can reduce breathing problems. The total time of the study is 3 months with daily visits by a member of our study team while you are in the hospital and 3 short follow-up calls after you leave the hospital. Your abdominal surgery is not changed in any way by participation in the study. The anesthesia medications and techniques that you will receive are standard in clinical care and are routinely used in patients, and you will be randomized (as the toss of a coin) either to a control group that will have a standard of care, i.e., care as usual even if you were not in the study, or to an intervention group, which will use strategies before, during and after your surgery that the investigators believe are best to reduce the probability of breathing problems after surgery. All these strategies belong to usual medical care and are specifically combined in this study to find out if they together can have a strong positive effect. Your anesthesia medications will be standard of care no matter what group you are assigned to. This investigation is being done in 16 medical centers in the US for a total of 750 patients, and the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is paying for it. While you may not benefit from taking part in this study, it is possible (not guaranteed) that your breathing problems are reduced if you do. What we learn from this study will also help future patients who will undergo abdominal surgery and may be at high risk of developing lung problems.