Latest News

Anesthesiologist Lisa Wollman, MD, filed a False Claims lawsuit this week against Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital and its parent company, Partners HealthCare System. The suit claims that orthopedic surgeons at the hospital frequently kept patients under anesthesia longer than necessary — sometimes much longer — because they were incentivized by the hospital to do as many procedures as possible. Surgeons routinely scheduled 2, or even 3, overlapping cases, she says.

Anesthesia providers often administer ketamine during surgery to help manage post-op pain and prevent delirium, but a new study published in the journal The Lancet suggests the drug does neither in older patients.

Repeated exposure to a common anesthesia drug early in life results in visual recognition memory impairment, which emerges after the first year of life and may persist long-term, according to a study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. Specifically, the study team exposed 10 non-human primate subjects to a common pediatric anesthetic called sevoflurane for four hours, the length of time required for a significant surgical procedure in humans. "Our results confirm that multiple anesthesia exposures alone result in memory impairment in a highly translational animal model."

Worldwide demographic shifts that are underway may represent an approaching, unseen tsunami for anesthesia practices in the United States. The recent and sudden onset of an apparent personnel shortage has caught many anesthesia practices by surprise. A paucity of discussion on this important topic in the anesthesia literature suggests many anesthesia administrators are unaware of the situation and will not be well prepared to weather the upcoming storm if it materializes.

Three bills that seek to improve safety in pediatric dental anesthesia are moving through the state Legislature. The California Dental Association says these bills provide for “additional training, monitoring and permitting requirements targeted to ensure that during the provision of pediatric dental anesthesia, the right people are in the room with the right training and the ability to respond quickly and expertly to emergencies should they arise.”