Anesthesia practitioners include anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and anesthesia assistants. These providers often work together in teams to deliver perioperative care. Healthcare practices and facilities have flexibility in determining how they want to deploy anesthesia services including the structure…
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Telehealth for Patient Care in Rural America
Approximately 20% of the U.S. population, totaling over 50 million people, lives in rural areas. Unfortunately, only 9% of practicing physicians serve these areas. The resulting lack of adequate access to care and resources has increased rural populations’ susceptibility to…
The Ethics of Anesthesiology: History and Origins
This post is part of a series exploring the issues of ethics in anesthesiology practice. When considering the ethics of anesthesiology practice, most people would think in the present tense. However, this aspect of anesthesiology has a storied history that…
Value Analysis and Anesthesia Management
As discussed previously, the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model has vast potential to disrupt the standards of anesthesia care. In a follow-up to that discussion, proposals in the anesthesiology community are now suggesting a value-based strategy to address efficiency and…
Recent Advances in Anesthesia
It would be difficult and presumptuous to try to cover all the recent advances in the field of anesthesia in one article, but a few new developments which have changed the way we manage our anesthetics deserve mention. Those included…
Management of Postdural Puncture Headache
Postdural Puncture Headache (PDPHA), as defined by the International Headache Society, is any headache that develops within 5 days of dural puncture and is not better explained by another cause. While the classic symptoms of PDPHA highlight a positional component…
Smoking Cessation in Perioperative Period
Anesthesiologists are likely to encounter many patients who smoke cigarettes over their career. Smoking is an independent risk factor for surgical complications, even after accounting for its contribution to such chronic diseases as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and heart…