The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 22, 2023

How will astronauts conduct general anesthesia and surgery in outer space? Is an anesthesiologist required on board? Protocols regarding how to accomplish anesthesia in outer space exist in the medical literature. Is a surgeon required on board?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MAY 3, 2017

In many health care systems there are no anesthesia clinics, and primary care doctors (internal medicine specialists, family practitioners, or pediatricians) do the preoperative assessments. What do anesthesiologists want to see in the internal medicine preoperative clearance consult? Let’s choose an illustrative example.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

CardioPulmonary Resuscitation in the Operating Room The Stanford Emergency Manual has become an essential reference for anesthesiologists. The Emergency Manual was created by the same team which pioneered simulator training for anesthesiologists, headed by Stanford faculty members Drs. Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 26, 2018

How can it be that general anesthesia has ceased to evolve? What about monitors of vital signs? The standard monitoring devices of pulse oximetry, end-tidal CO2 monitoring, and other essential anesthesia vital sign monitors were developed and in use by the 1990s.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 31, 2015

An anesthesia emergency occurs without warning. Your patient’s vital signs are dropping. As the anesthesiologist, it’s your job to make the correct diagnosis and act promptly to save your patient. You need the ultimate anesthesia emergency guidebook. Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 24, 2020

His vital signs are normal, and his abdominal exam is negative for tenderness. He is scheduled for general anesthesia for the endoscopy procedure. Twenty minutes before his procedure, the anesthesiologist asks the patient if he takes any medicine or drugs. “How the anesthesiologist asks. About five years.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 4, 2022

The Glidescope, sugammadex, ultrasound-guided blocks, and the time-consuming Electronic Medical Record arrived, but we typically administer the same medications, use the same airway tubes, and watch the same vital signs monitors as we did in the 1990s. Will we live to see anesthesiologists replaced by technology?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 14, 2015

The practice of anesthesiology becomes very much like a physiology experiment with the twin goals for the patient of a) guaranteeing sleep, while b) striving to maintain perfect vital signs. The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Generic propofol is inexpensive, averaging about $2.27 Neither ciprofol nor propofol caused statistically significant differences in vital signs. mg/kg for the induction of general anesthesia. Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia? Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?

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Anaesthesia News

MARCH 6, 2024

Pharyngeal airway express (PAXpress) The PA Xpress TM (Vital Signs Inc., Conclusion: Anesthesiologists and patients rely on equipment to be safe during anesthesia. Care of patients can improve only through a sustained effort by clinicians and manufacturers to improve the medical devices used during anesthesia.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 18, 2019

Data exists that intravenous caffeine may be effective in assisting the awakening of patients following general anesthesia. Will future anesthesiologists routinely use caffeine to wake patients after surgery? Will a shot of IV espresso be the stimulus for you to return to consciousness after your general anesthetic?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 2, 2018

Prior to surgery your patient tells you, “I always get a hangover after general anesthesia. I’ve been a full time anesthesiologist for 34 years, and I’ve heard this monologue from patients countless times. Propofol and sevoflurane are the mainstays of 21 st century general anesthesia. The patient is always right.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

OCTOBER 11, 2020

Most patients have no real idea what anesthesiologists do. Most college premed students have no real idea what anesthesiologists do. Most medical students have no real idea what anesthesiologists do. Anesthesiologists are responsible for your medical care before, during, and after surgeries.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Let’s look at a case study which highlights a specific risk of general anesthesia at a freestanding surgery center or a surgeon’s office operating room, when the anesthesiologist departs soon after the case is finished. The anesthesiologist meets the patient prior to the surgery, reviews the chart, and examines the patient.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

You’re a board-certified anesthesiologist. You’ve graduated from a residency program in which you learned the nuances of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative anesthesia practice. Individuals would never board a Boeing 787 aircraft and tell the pilot what to do, but individuals will try to influence their anesthesiologist.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

FEBRUARY 23, 2018

The most significant anesthesiologist of the 20 th century died just weeks ago, on December 21, 2017. Many of you have never heard of Dr. New, and don’t know what he was famous for, but in my opinion he was the Most Valuable Player of the anesthesia ranks in the last one hundred years. His name was William New, MD, PhD.

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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). Anesthesiologists are vigilant during extubation.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JULY 12, 2021

Vigilance regarding a sleeping patient’s vital signs was always paramount, but the constant effort to be vigilant could be mind-numbing. Anesthesiologists could chat with the surgeons and/or nurses, make an occasional phone call, and at times read materials they brought with them into the operating room.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MARCH 28, 2024

Every transplantation requires an anesthesiologist, and I’m qualified to answer this question for you. The donor and recipient bodies would need to be anesthetized by two separate teams of anesthesiologists in these adjacent rooms, to minimize the time the oxygen-deprived brain was not perfused with blood during the transfer.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MAY 23, 2023

” Despite this, during surgery your anesthesiologist injected fentanyl into your IV as part of your anesthetic. As a street drug, fentanyl overdose is a critical problem in the United States, but anesthesiologists administer fentanyl to most patients, and do so safely. Why do anesthesiologists utilize fentanyl?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 23, 2016

GENERAL ANESTHESIA FOR DENTAL OFFICES CASE PRESENTATION: A 5-year-old developmentally delayed autistic boy has multiple dental cavities. The dentist consults you, a physician anesthesiologist, to do sedation or anesthesia for dental restoration. The dentist and an anesthesiologist were both present. What do you do?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 15, 2022

William Morton (below) discovered ether anesthesia first. THE FIRST PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION OF ETHER AS A GENERAL ANESTHETIC. Dr. Morton performed the first public demonstration of general anesthesia at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846. Dr. William Morton, Boston, USA.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 7, 2017

Anesthesiologists work in operating rooms and intensive care units—acute care settings which demand vigilance, steady hands, and quick thinking. The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia? What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

You’re the anesthesiologist assigned to a freestanding ambulatory surgery center (ASC). On physical exam, her vital signs are normal, her lungs are clear, and her heart exam is positive for the clicking sound of a mechanical valve and a 2/6 systolic murmur. How could the anesthesiologist better manage the emergency?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

During the dayshift, working alone is seldom an issue for any anesthesiologist. A typical hospital will have dozens of other anesthesia providers working in the same building. Within seconds or minutes, any anesthesiologist can be assisted or bailed out by a colleague. There are multiple different models of anesthesia care.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

MAY 2, 2023

Louis Imagine this: You’re an anesthesiologist in the operating room at a busy hospital. Your patient is in mid-surgery, and you receive a call from the Anesthesia Control Tower that the patient’s blood pressure is too low, your blood transfusion replacement is inadequate, and that the patient is in danger. What do you do?

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The Anesthesia Consultant

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

My name is Rick Novak, and I’m a double-boarded anesthesiologist and internal medicine doctor and a writer of medical fiction. This device monitors the patient’s EEG level of consciousness via a BIS monitor device as well as traditional vital signs. No device on the horizon can be expected to replace anesthesiologists.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 12, 2023

Is it feasible that CHATGPT, this decades artificial intelligence wunderkind, can equal or better a physician anesthesiologist? I entered three anesthesia consultations into CHATGPT, one preoperative, one intraoperative, and one postoperative. In 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov head to head.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

APRIL 4, 2021

You’re the anesthesiologist on call on a Saturday night. The attending general surgeon wants to do an upper GI endoscopy to extract the piece of meat from the patient’s esophagus or push it through into the stomach. The surgeon sprays Cetacaine into the patient’s mouth for topical anesthesia and inserts a bite block.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 13, 2021

The anesthesiologist induces general anesthesia, and ten minutes later the patient has ventricular arrhythmias which descend into a cardiac arrest. All vital signs were normal. A 12-year-old boy and his mother walk into a surgery center. The child is scheduled for a tonsillectomy, and is otherwise healthy.

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Radius Anesthesia

MAY 17, 2023

Anesthesiologists therefore need to pay close attention to patients receiving chemotherapy, looking for any such side effects on organ systems 2. Patient safety and the precise delivery of radiotherapy remain the primary goals of intraoperative radiotherapy, presenting key challenges to anesthesiologists, whose role is multipronged.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

JUNE 27, 2017

Then he injects her IV with a syringe of adrenaline, and leaves the vital signs monitor on. The vital signs monitor shows her heart rate suddenly change to zero as she dies. The vital signs monitor continues to emit a soft high-pitched tone, but there’s no one else around to hear it.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

APRIL 26, 2018

The eligible residents were second-year residents (anesthesia residency training was only two years in duration during the 1980’s). As a second-year resident, I was a partially trained anesthesiologist who had done only 800-1000 anesthetics at that time, and was not yet eligible to sit for the American Board of Anesthesia exam.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

SEPTEMBER 1, 2017

This was an important study which documented what experienced anesthesiologists already know—although our specialty has never been safer, preventable deaths still occur. The study analyzed the United States Anesthesia Closed Claims Project database of 10,546 malpractice claims between 2001-2013. Schulz MD et al.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

AUGUST 16, 2018

These three words make any anesthesiologist cringe. If something dire goes wrong during anesthesia and surgery and the flow of oxygen to the brain is cut off, an anesthesia practitioner has about five minutes to diagnose the cause of the problem and treat it. The anesthesiologist decided to extubate the trachea.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

FEBRUARY 19, 2016

As an experienced anesthesiologist, I’ve personally watched over 25,000 patients sleep during my career. The procedure does not require a breathing tube, so we’ll administer the sedation and be vigilant regarding what happens to the patient’s vital signs. Without an anesthesiologist present, the patient could die.

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The Anesthesia Consultant

APRIL 8, 2025

anesthesia, I see commandments as guidelines for how to be a safe and excellent anesthesiologist. Based on forty years of clinical practice and administration in both community and academic anesthesiology, here are Ten Commandments of Anesthesia as I see them: Be a doctor, not a propofol technician.

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