The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 4, 2022

How soon will we see robotic anesthesia in our hospitals and surgery centers? Most of these discoveries originated in Silicon Valley, just miles outside Stanford University Hospital where I’ve been working for the past 42 years. Our medical world inside the hospital has changed more slowly. Relatively little.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

OCTOBER 8, 2019

The most invasive type of airway tube used in anesthesia is called an endotracheal tube, or ET tube. At the onset of general anesthesia anesthesiologists place an ET tube through the mouth, past the larynx (voice box), and into the trachea (windpipe). If the patient has an ET tube, it is usually removed.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JULY 11, 2019

Sixty-six percent of surgeries in the United States take place as an outpatient , and many of these surgeries are performed at freestanding facilities distant from hospitals. If the patient is unstable, a physician, usually an anesthesiologist, will need to accompany the patient and the EMTs to the hospital emergency room.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 31, 2020

If/when hospital intensive care units (ICUs) become overwhelmed with too many coronavirus patients requiring ventilators, then ethical choices may need to be made. 137 were discharged and 54 died in hospital. A COVID-19 patient sick with pneumonia may have a low blood oxygen level of 50 mm Hg on 100% oxygen, or 1.0

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The Anesthesia Consultant

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

If this airway obstruction is not remedied, the oxygen saturation will drop below a safe level of 90%. At these low blood oxygen levels, the brain and heart will be deprived of necessary oxygen. A prolonged low blood oxygen level can lead to life threatening cardiac dysrhythmias or a cardiac arrest.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 16, 2018

In an anesthetic disaster the brain can be deprived of oxygen. Without oxygen, brain cells die, and once they die they do not regenerate. Some brain cells start dying within five minutes after the oxygen supply disappears, and brain hypoxia can rapidly cause severe brain damage or death. and some don’t. and some don’t.

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