Category ANESTHESIA PATIENT QUESTIONS BLOG

This blog attempts to answer common questions laypeople have about anesthesia.

RECREATIONAL KETAMINE

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Street use of the anesthetic ketamine is on the rise. Kylie, a 28-year-old professional female, recently told me about her experience snorting recreational ketamine: “I was feeling anxious and I was feeling sad. My friend suggested I try snorting some ketamine crystals she had, and when I did . . . I had the best feeling of my life. The drug made me happier. It made the next hour a fun experience without any sadness, and when the high wore off an hour later my sadness was still gone. It was as if I’d been treated with some antidepressant drug, and the improvement in my mood was more lasting than the initial buzz. Now I see my future using ketamine as a periodic antidepressant. When you read about it on the internet, doctors are prescribing ketamine as a treatment for depression, but the whole medical clinic intravenous treatment is really expensive. It’s a lot easier to do it myself with ketamine I buy on the streets.”

Hmmm. We’re all aware of the dangers of recreational drug use with cocaine or methamphetamine or narcotics. We’re all aware of the dangers of recreational drugs laced with fentanyl, a powerful drug that can stop a person’s breathing and kill them in minutes. In this context, what kind of a threat is street ketamine?

 

KETAMINE AS AN ANESTHETIC

Ketamine is a powerful general anesthetic drug in an anesthesiologist’s toolbox. In 1962 Calvin Stevens, a professor of chemistry at Wayne State University, synthesized ketamine from phencyclidine (PCP), an animal tranquilizer/anesthetic also known as angel dust, with the desired goal of discovering a safer anesthetic with fewer hallucinogenic effects than PCP.

Anesthesiologists administer ketamine intravenously to produce general anesthesia without utilizing any anesthesia gas. We call ketamine a dissociative drug, because it can distort sensory perception and impart a feeling of detachment from oneself and the environment. The drug can produce bizarre and unpleasant nightmares, so anesthesiologists are trained to pair ketamine with an intravenous benzodiazepine such as Versed to temper ketamine’s potentially frightening dream world. Anesthesiologists are also trained to pair ketamine with an anticholinergic (mouth-drying) medication such as atropine or glycopyrrolate (Robinul), because ketamine can produce excessive salivating, which can lead to a patient choking on a rising tide of saliva.

For anesthesia usage, ketamine is a clear liquid with a concentration of 100 mg/ml or 50 mg/ml.

Because ketamine is an effective general anesthetic in one syringe, it’s included on the World Health Organization’s list of essential drugs.  For medical sedation, ketamine is typically diluted and administered intravenously in small boluses of 20 to 30 mg, and titrated to obtain the desired depth of anesthesia.  To induce general anesthesia, the intravenous dose is 1 – 4.5 mg/kg, or a mean dose of 2 mg/kg = 100 mg for a 50 kg adult. If it’s not possible to insert an IV line (e.g. if a patient is uncooperative, developmentally delayed, or is a child), a combination of 2 mg/kg of ketamine, 0.2 mg/kg of midazolam, and .02 mg/kg of atropine can be administered as an intramuscular injection into the deltoid muscle of the shoulder or the quadriceps muscle of the anterior thigh. To induce general anesthesia with intramuscular ketamine alone, dosing levels are higher than for intravenous use, for example the intramuscular dose is 6.5 – 13 mg/kg, or a mean dose of 10 mg/kg = 500 mg ketamine for a 50 kilogram adult.

How does medical ketamine affect a patient’s ABCs of airway, breathing, and circulation? Patients typically maintain an adequate airway and breathing during ketamine sedation and anesthesia, which is advantageous in short surgical procedures because this often eliminates the need for a breathing tube. Ketamine causes stimulation of the cardiovascular system, with the potential side effect of increasing blood pressure.

There is no reversal agent for ketamine. If an administered ketamine dose is excessive, a patient’s airway and breathing may become compromised, resulting in inadequate oxygen delivery to the lungs, heart, and brain. Patients who are obese, or who have obstructive sleep apnea, may lose their safe airway and breathing status during ketamine sedation. Ketamine can elevate blood pressure, so vigilant monitoring of the blood pressure is required, and acute treatment for hypertension may be necessary. Because of these risks, ketamine administration is typically limited to anesthesia professionals or physicians who are experts in the emergency management of airways and acute vital sign changes.

 

KETAMINE AS AN INTRAVENOUS ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUG

Multiple meta-analyses have concluded that IV ketamine is an effective rapid-acting antidepressant for major depressive disorders.  Ketamine was first reported to have antidepressant properties in the year 2000, when published data showed that an intravenous administration of a sub-anesthetic ketamine dose resulted in a reduction of symptoms in major depressive disorder (MDD). MDD is a common disorder with significant consequences. A 2012 epidemiological study of mental health in Canada showed the lifetime prevalence of major depressive disorder was 3.9%. The prevalence was higher in women and in younger age groups. Ketamine is a treatment option for patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression (TRD). IV ketamine can exert rapid antidepressant effects as early as several hours after administration. In contrast, traditional oral antidepressant pills usually require several weeks of therapy for a clinical response. Ketamine has a unique mechanism of action on the central nervous system, at the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) and AMPA (𝛼-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid) receptors, rather than at the serotonin and/or noradrenaline neurotransmitters that are the sites of action for traditional antidepressant pills such as Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft.

Intravenous ketamine clinics are typically supervised by an attending anesthesiologist whose is present is to ensure the safe management of airway, breathing, and circulation during these brief sedation anesthetics. Intravenous ketamine administered in a clinic setting can result in adverse effects during the infusion period and immediately afterward, including nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, dissociation, or an increase in blood pressure.Typically an infusion of 0.5 mg/kg of ketamine (e.g. 40 mg for an 80 kg patient) is administered slowly over 40 – 60 minutes. The patient will remain onsite in a recovery room until the sedative effects have cleared. Patients report positive antidepressant effects within two hours, and these effects last for one to two weeks. Data demonstrate a positive response rate of 44% after six intravenous ketamine treatments in patients with treatment-resistant depression.  A series of anesthetics will cost significantly more than one Prozac pill per day, so the use of ketamine as an antidepressant is directed at treatment-resistant depression.

 

KETAMINE AS AN INTRANASAL ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUG

In 2019 the FDA approved a nasal spray called Spravato (active ingredient esketamine) for major depression that failed treatment with two or more oral antidepressants.

Per the Spravato website:

SPRAVATO® is a non-competitive N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist indicated, in conjunction with oral antidepressant, for the treatment of:  treatment-resistant depression in adults, depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) with acute suicidal ideation or behavior.

SPRAVATO® is intended for use only in a certified healthcare setting.

SPRAVATO® is intended for patient administration under the direct observation of a healthcare provider, and patients are required to be monitored by a healthcare provider for at least 2 hours. SPRAVATO® must never be dispensed directly to a patient for home use. 

 

 

The advantage of intranasal ketamine is that it does not require an IV, and it requires monitoring by a healthcare provider but does not require an anesthesiologist to supervise its administration.

 

KETAMINE AS A RECREATIONAL DRUG

To supply the illicit street market, diverted pharmaceutical liquid ketamine is evaporated from its liquid solution into a powdered form.

How popular is recreational ketamine? The number of ketamine seizures by federal, state and local law enforcement in the United States increased from 55 in 2017 to 247 in 2022. The total weight of ketamine confiscated increased by more than 1,000 percent over the five years. The majority of the confiscated ketamine was in powder form. According to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), powdered ketamine is typically packaged in “small glass vials, small plastic bags, and capsules as well as paper, glassine, or aluminum foil folds. . . . powdered ketamine is cut into lines known as bumps and snorted, or it is smoked, typically in marijuana or tobacco cigarettes. . . . Ketamine is found by itself or often in combination with MDMA, amphetamine, methamphetamine, or cocaine. . . . Ketamine produces hallucinations. It distorts perceptions of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control. A ‘Special K’ trip is touted as better than that of LSD or PCP because its hallucinatory effects are relatively short in duration, lasting approximately 30 to 60 minutes as opposed to several hours. . . . An overdose can cause unconsciousness and dangerously slowed breathing.” (bold lettering mine.)

Recreational users call the phenomenon of a deep ketamine high as a “K-hole.” Falling into a K-hole means the drug user is temporarily unable to interact with others or the world around them. Some people refer to a K-hole as an out-of-body or near-death experience. The effects of long-term use of dissociative drugs such as ketamine haven’t been exhaustively studied, but ketamine use is thought to be reinforcing, meaning that individuals find the ketamine high an experience they wish to repeat. Repeated ketamine usage likely leads to some degree of tolerance and physical dependence.

The website The Cut states that “most of the recreational users . . . take K in very small doses, seeking a pleasant buzz that wears off within 30 minutes or can be re-upped as needed. It’s often taken to compliment other drugs — a garnish instead of the main course. For a generation that has less free time for sprawling multi-day psychedelic trips, ketamine has an appealing choose-your-own-adventure quality. . . . Claire says it actually feels like a healthier and more mature lifestyle. ‘People are like: I used to go out and have 16 drinks and do a bunch of cocaine and feel like shit the next day. And then it was this total shift [to ketamine]: Oh, yeah, I can do this. And it still feels like stepping out of my life, but I also feel fine tomorrow.’ At this point, she says: ‘I wouldn’t say that it’s different than like, a bunch of people getting off work and going out for drinks.’”

 

KETAMINE AS A RECREATIONAL ANTIDEPRESSANT?

Can a layperson use ketamine recreationally to treat themself for depression? The specter of self-treatment reminds one of the saying that a physician who treats himself has a fool for a doctor and a fool for a patient. A corollary of this is: a person who treats his or her mood disorder with recreational ketamine has a fool for a caretaker and a fool for a patient.

Kylie will attempt to titrate ketamine recreationally to treat her depression. But a precise, tailored medical dose is required for patients to experience optimal benefit from ketamine with safety. Individuals who self-administer ketamine expose themselves to serious health risks. Ketamine may make their symptoms worse, or they may even die from the habit. Kylie has no plans to have a healthcare provider present when she self-administers ketamine. Kylie has no idea of the milligram dose she is snorting. Her ketamine is not FDA-approved, and may in fact contain fentanyl at a dose that could cease her breathing and kill her.

How dangerous is ketamine? A meta-analysis of the published medical literature showed a total of 312 overdose cases and 138 deaths from recreational ketamine. There were no cases of overdose or death related to the use of ketamine as an antidepressant in a therapeutic setting. Street ketamine may seem cheaper, as the cost of ketamine on the street is approximately $100 per gram (1000 mg), and a single dose is approximately 100 mg. Medical treatment with 50 mg IV ketamine costs approximately $400-$800 per treatment. But ketamine administered by anesthesiologists in a clinic is safe, while there are legitimate respiratory and cardiac risks involved in the recreational use of ketamine.

If Kylie is depressed and seeks relief, an appropriate action would be to consult a psychiatrist. The alternative of intermittent recreational intranasal ketamine as a self-administered treatment for her depression is a dangerous detour.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia? Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia? Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia? What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications? How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century? Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia? What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include: 10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6? 12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99? Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

CHATGPT AND ANESTHESIA

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

In 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov head to head.  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. Is CHATGPT as good as an MD? Let’s look at what the computer answered:

PREOPERATIVE QUESTION

An 80-year-old woman with congestive heart failure gets short of breath walking up one flight of stairs. She needs to have her gallbladder removed. What sort of preoperative tests or therapies should this patient have before surgery?

 

CHATGPT: For an 80-year-old woman with congestive heart failure (CHF) who needs to undergo gallbladder removal surgery, it is essential to conduct a thorough preoperative evaluation to assess her overall health status and identify any potential risks. The specific evaluation required may vary depending on the patient’s medical history, the severity of the CHF, and the recommendations of the healthcare team involved. However, here are some general aspects that may be considered:

  1. Cardiac Evaluation: Given the patient’s CHF and symptoms of shortness of breath, it’s important to assess her cardiac function comprehensively. This may involve an electrocardiogram (ECG) to evaluate heart rhythm, an echocardiogram to assess heart structure and function, and possibly additional tests such as stress testing or cardiac catheterization, depending on the severity of her symptoms and the presence of any known cardiac conditions.
  2. Pulmonary Evaluation: Since the patient experiences shortness of breath, it may be necessary to evaluate her lung function. Pulmonary function tests, such as spirometry, may be conducted to assess lung capacity and function.
  3. Lab Tests: Routine blood tests may be performed to assess the patient’s overall health and check for any abnormalities that could impact surgery. This may include a complete blood count (CBC), comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), coagulation profile, and other specific tests as deemed necessary.
  4. Imaging Studies: Depending on the patient’s medical history and symptoms, imaging studies like an abdominal ultrasound or a computed tomography (CT) scan may be ordered to confirm the diagnosis of gallbladder disease and assess its severity.
  5. Medication Review: A review of the patient’s current medications, including those used to manage her CHF, is crucial to ensure they are optimized for the surgery. Medications may need to be adjusted or temporarily stopped to minimize potential risks during the procedure.
  6. Anesthesia Evaluation: An evaluation by an anesthesiologist is important to assess the patient’s readiness for anesthesia and determine the most appropriate anesthesia plan for her, taking into account her cardiac condition and any other medical considerations.

It’s important to note that this is a general outline, and the specific preoperative evaluation for the patient should be determined by her healthcare team, including her primary care physician, surgeon, cardiologist, and anesthesiologist. They will consider her individual medical history and unique circumstances to ensure a safe and successful surgery.

 

INTRAOPERATIVE DECISION

A 60-year-old man with a history of hypertension is having a knee arthroscopy surgery under general anesthesia. In the middle of the anesthetic, his heart rate drops to 20 beats per minute, his blood pressure drops to unmeasurable, and he no longer has peripheral pulses. What do you think is going wrong, and what should be done do to save this man?

CHATGPT: I’m not a doctor, but the symptoms you described during the anesthetic suggest a severe and potentially life-threatening condition. This could indicate a cardiac event or a complication related to the anesthesia. One possible explanation for the sudden drop in heart rate, blood pressure, and loss of peripheral pulses is a condition called “bradycardia with hypotension” or “bradycardia-induced hypotension.”

In this situation, it’s crucial for the medical professionals involved to take immediate action. Here are some general steps that might be considered:

  1. Alert the medical team: The anesthesiologist or healthcare providers in the operating room need to be notified immediately about the patient’s deteriorating condition. The surgeon and additional medical personnel may also be called upon for assistance.
  2. Assess the airway, breathing, and circulation (ABCs): Ensure that the patient’s airway is clear and breathing is supported. Provide supplemental oxygen if necessary. Assess circulation and check for the presence of a pulse. If the patient is unresponsive or there is no pulse, initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) immediately.
  3. Notify the code team: If the patient remains unresponsive and pulseless, it may be necessary to activate a “code blue” or similar emergency response to involve a specialized team experienced in resuscitation procedures.
  4. Perform advanced cardiac life support (ACLS): Healthcare providers trained in ACLS protocols will initiate resuscitation measures, including chest compressions, defibrillation (if indicated for certain types of cardiac rhythms), and administration of medications such as epinephrine to help restore circulation.
  5. Identify and address potential causes: Once the patient’s vital signs have stabilized or as the resuscitation efforts continue, the medical team will work to identify the underlying cause of the cardiac event. This may involve evaluating the patient’s medical history, reviewing medications, and conducting further diagnostic tests such as an electrocardiogram (ECG) or blood tests.

It’s important to note that the above steps are general guidelines and the specific actions taken may vary depending on the patient’s condition, the resources available, and the expertise of the medical team on-site. In such a critical situation, the immediate focus will be on stabilizing the patient and providing appropriate resuscitation efforts to restore circulation and address any life-threatening issues.

 

POST ANESTHESIA EMERGENCY

In the recovery room after a tonsillectomy, a 5-year-old child coughs up blood, becomes short of breath, and becomes unconscious. What is probably going on, and what should be done to save this child?

CHATGPT: I’m not a doctor, but the symptoms you described following a tonsillectomy can be indicative of a serious complication known as postoperative hemorrhage. In this situation, it’s crucial to seek immediate medical attention. Here are some general steps that might be considered:

  1. Activate the emergency response: Alert the medical staff immediately about the child’s deteriorating condition. Nurses and physicians in the recovery room should be notified, and additional assistance may be needed, such as calling a code or emergency response team.
  2. Ensure a patent airway and support breathing: Assess the child’s airway and breathing. If the child is experiencing difficulty breathing or is unresponsive, the healthcare providers should take steps to establish and maintain a clear airway. They may administer oxygen and provide respiratory support if necessary.
  3. Control bleeding: Postoperative hemorrhage can cause significant blood loss, leading to the symptoms you described. The doctors should perform a thorough examination to identify the source of bleeding and take appropriate measures to control it. This may involve suctioning the blood from the child’s mouth, using medications to constrict blood vessels (such as topical epinephrine), or applying direct pressure to the bleeding site.
  4. Administer fluids and blood products: If the child is experiencing significant blood loss, intravenous fluids and blood products may be necessary to stabilize their condition and restore blood volume.
  5. Provide immediate resuscitation measures: If the child becomes unconscious or experiences cardiac arrest, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should be initiated immediately. Healthcare providers trained in pediatric resuscitation will perform chest compressions, provide assisted ventilation, and administer medications as required.
  6. Prepare for surgical intervention: Depending on the severity of the bleeding and the child’s condition, emergency surgical intervention may be necessary to control the bleeding. The surgical team will be assembled, and the child will be transferred to the operating room for further assessment and management.

It’s important to note that the above steps are general guidelines, and the specific actions taken may vary depending on the child’s condition, the resources available, and the expertise of the medical team on-site. In such a critical situation, the immediate focus will be on stabilizing the child, controlling the bleeding, and providing any necessary resuscitation efforts.

 

ANALYSIS: 

Note that CHATGPT preceded two of its three answers with the words, “I’m not a doctor, but,” which likely removes the possibility that CHATGPT creator OpenAI will be sued for medical malpractice. From the answers above, I’ll attest that if you’re an inexperienced anesthesiologist or certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) working alone, there is value having a resource like CHATGPT immediately available. Are there any notable errors in the CHATGPT answers? No, not really. As a written reply to the questions posed, the artificial intelligence of CHATGPT gives a reasonable outline regarding how to proceed.

Anesthesia is an acute care specialty, and often there will be no time to consult CHATGPT regarding what to do next because the patient is trying to die right in front of you, for example in the second and third scenarios above. Expect artificial intelligence in medicine to be most applicable in specialties like radiology, pathology, and dermatology, where digital images are analyzed. In radiology, this would be the evaluation of digital X-rays, MRIs, or CT scans. In pathology, this would be the evaluations of digital images of microscopic biopsies, and in dermatology, this would be the evaluation of digital images of skin lesion photographs. The model for the machine learning of digital images will be similar to the process in which a human child learns. When a child sees an animal, his parents tell him that animal is a dog. After repeated exposures the child learns what a dog looks like. Early on the child may be fooled into thinking that a wolf is a dog, but with increasing experience the child can discern with almost perfect accuracy what is or is not a dog.

CHATGPT relays information developed by algorithms. Is the practice of medicine destined to be directed by computer algorithms? Yes. We’re already guided by algorithms/cognitive aides such as the decision trees of Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) or the Stanford Emergency Manual. These flow charts are useful to direct acute care, and to assure no aspect of emergency treatment is overlooked. Expanded use of algorithms is inevitable as more data is accumulated on the management of large populations of medical patients. Current electronic medical records (EMR) systems exist in every hospital, and the EMRs are generating the sort of Big Data that algorithms will be built on.

I’ve had an interest in AI and robots in medicine for years. All Things That Matter Press published my novel Doctor Vita in 2019, several years before CHAPGPT became reality. Doctor Vita described the introduction of artificial intelligence in medicine machines in a Silicon Valley university hospital. A significant and anticipated advance in Doctor Vita is the ability to interact with patients and doctors by voice input and auditory output. In short, the artificial intelligence in medicine of the future will converse with us, just as Alexa and Siri already do.

The World Health Organization projects there will be a shortage of ten million healthcare workers worldwide by the year 2030. Contemplate the following:

  1. All medical knowledge is available on the Internet. Doctors don’t know everything or remember everything, so we routinely look up facts, evidence, and data on the Internet. A computer can recall all of these facts.
  2. Most every medical diagnosis and treatment can eventually be written as a decision tree algorithm;
  3. Voice interaction software is excellent and improving every year;
  4. The physical exam is of less diagnostic importance than scans and lab tests which can be digitalized; and
  5. A computer is far cheaper than the seven-year post-college education required to train a physician.

Will artificial intelligence assist MDs or replace MDs?Replacement of medical personnel with computers will not be welcomed by patients, doctors, or nurses, but there’s a need for cheaper healthcare, and the concept of automating physician tasks is no longer the domain of science fiction. It’s inevitable that AI will change current medical practice. A bold prediction: AI will change medicine more than any development since the invention of anesthesia in 1849.

 

Will the evolution of artificial intelligence in medicine lead to improved healthcare outcomes? In 2018 and 2019 autopilots drove two Boeing 737 Max airplanes to crashes despite the best efforts of human pilots to correct their course. Eleven people were killed in crashes involving vehicles using automated driving systems in the United States during a four-month period in 2022. Will we see improved outcomes or worsening outcomes when AI intersects with medicine, and machines are directing medical care? We don’t know yet. In the spirit of Jules Verne, this century’s trip around the world, to the center of the earth, to the moon, or beneath the ocean’s surface, will be the coming of artificial intelligence in medicine.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia? Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia? Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia? What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications? How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century? Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia? What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include: 10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6? 12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99? Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

MY ANESTHESIOLOGIST ADMINISTERED FENTANYL TO ME. IS THAT OK?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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America is in the midst of a fentanyl crisis. There were 71,238 fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States in 2021. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) states, “fentanyl is involved in more deaths of Americans under 50 than any cause of death, including heart disease, cancer, homicide, suicide and other accidents.”

Despite this, during surgery your anesthesiologist injected fentanyl into your IV as part of your anesthetic. Is that safe?

Yes.

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. I review charts from all regions of the U.S., and virtually every anesthetic includes the safe use of fentanyl. Fentanyl was introduced in the 1960s when it was first patented under the brand name Sublimaze, and fentanyl quickly became the most commonly administered narcotic by anesthesia providers. In operating room anesthesia, the narcotic fentanyl is a clear liquid usually marketed in vials of two milliliters or five milliliters.

Why do anesthesiologists utilize fentanyl? Most surgeries cause pain, and our pharmaceutical options for relieving pain include local anesthetics, anesthesia gases,  or narcotics. When possible, we advocate for the injection of local anesthetics by the surgeon or the anesthesiologist to block postoperative pain. Local anesthetics include lidocaine, bupivacaine (also known as Marcaine), or ropivacaine. In addition, most general anesthetics include a potent inhaled anesthesia gas such as sevoflurane. Sevoflurane vapor maintains unconsciousness, blocks memory, and renders a patient pain-free, but when the surgery concludes, the anesthesia gases are turned off so that the patient will awaken. As the anesthesia gas is exhaled, a patient becomes progressively more alert, and will eventually be awake enough to feel surgical pain. The intravenous injection of a narcotic medication such as fentanyl is a common antidote to postoperative pain.

Narcotics relieve pain, but also have the undesirable side effects of respiratory depression, sedation, nausea, and constipation. Narcotics available to an anesthesiologist include morphine, Demerol, Dilaudid, or fentanyl. We commonly administer fentanyl because it has a rapid onset and rapid offset of its effect when compared to the other three drugs. The onset of action of intravenous fentanyl is less than 60 seconds. Its peak effect is at 2–5 minutes, with a half-life of 90 minutes and a duration of action of 30–60 minutes. In contrast, intravenous morphine has a slower peak effect at 5–15 minutes, with a longer half-life of 1.5–2 hours, and a longer duration of action of 3–4 hours. Because the peak effect of morphine, Demerol, or Dilaudid does not occur as rapidly as fentanyl, titrating the intravenous loading of morphine, Demerol, or Dilaudid is a slower process. Fentanyl’s rapid onset of narcotic effect is desirable because anesthesia providers quickly know whether an additional dose is necessary to achieve the titrated level of pain relief we seek. We can administer an IV dose of fentanyl every five minutes, waiting only those five minutes to evaluate how effective the preceding dose was.

Respiratory Depression:

The most serious side effect of intravenous fentanyl in anesthesia usage is the same side effect that makes street fentanyl dangerous, and that’s the side effect of respiratory depression. In layman’s terms, an excessive dose of fentanyl quickly causes a patient to stop breathing. The medical term for cessation of breathing is apnea. In an anesthesiologist’s hands, apnea is easily handled because we are skilled at ventilating oxygen into a patient’s lungs safely via a mask or an airway tube.

Street overdoses of fentanyl are best treated with naloxone (brand name Narcan). Nasal Narcan is now approved for over the counter (OTC) sale in the United States. In a medical setting, intravenous Narcan is injected to reverse a narcotic overdose. Injection of one ampule of Narcan (0.4 mg) will completely reverse narcotic apnea and unconsciousness in an overdosed patient in less than a minute.

The protocol for treating an emergency room patient who is unconscious on admission for unknown reasons includes an empirical intravenous injection of Narcan. If the patient’s coma was caused by any narcotic overdose, the patient will awaken within seconds.

Fentanyl is one hundred times more potent than morphine.  Medical fentanyl doses are prescribed in micrograms, while morphine is prescribed in milligrams. One microgram is only 1/1000 of a milligram. A narcotic as potent as fentanyl is typically only utilized by MDs expert at handling apneic patients, and the IV antidote Narcan is always immediately available. Most medical doctors other than anesthesiologists never prescribe intravenous fentanyl. Your general practitioner or primary care doctor will never prescribe fentanyl. A cardiologist may prescribe IV fentanyl sedation for a procedure such as a cardiac catheterization, or a or surgeon may prescribe fentanyl for a superficial excision surgery, but anesthesiologists are typically the only physicians who pick up a fentanyl ampule, insert a needle and syringe into the ampule, and then inject the drug into a patient’s IV. In the intensive care unit (ICU), fentanyl can be used to sedate patients who already have a breathing tube (endotracheal tube) in their windpipe, and who are on a mechanical ventilator. An ICU physician will write an order for the dosing of intravenous fentanyl, and the ICU nurse will be in constant attendance to monitor the patient’s vital signs and level of sedation.

Addiction:

Are you at risk for becoming an addict because your anesthesiologist gives you doses of intravenous fentanyl? No. Most patients have no idea they received IV fentanyl as part of their anesthetic care. The effects of fentanyl wear off within several hours after the end of the surgery, and there is no data that a patient will have a craving for additional fentanyl. After surgery, hospital inpatients who have postoperative pain are typically treated with longer acting narcotics such as morphine or Dilaudid. After surgery, outpatients who have postoperative pain are typically treated with narcotic pain pills such as Oxycontin or Norco. There is no pill form of fentanyl that a patient goes home with, or that a patient can overdose with.

Note that in medical settings, fentanyl can be given by means other than IV injection:

FENTANYL PATCH

Can medical fentanyl be stolen, find its way to the streets, and be a cause of overdose deaths of non-medical people? No. The DEA forces all hospitals, surgery centers, and medical offices to keep a strict tally of all narcotics and controlled substances. At the end of every day, a precise count of all ampules of fentanyl is done, and unless one of the doctors or nurses falsifies their count, it is unlikely any fentanyl escapes a medical facility and winds up in the hands of dealers, addicts, or individuals in the outside world.

Conclusion:

It’s true that medically administered intravenous fentanyl can cause a person to stop breathing, but if an anesthesiologist is present watching every breath, you’re safe. When an airway specialist is present and fentanyl is administered in a hospital operating room, an emergency room, an ambulatory surgery center, or a physician’s office operating room, this represents safe care in the United States today. Don’t worry if you hear your anesthesia provider is going to give you fentanyl. It’s OK. Medical administration of fentanyl has been going since the 1960s. Deaths from fentanyl overdose in a medical setting would be almost unheard of.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia? Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia? Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia? What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications? How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century? Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia? What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include: 10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6? 12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99? Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

THE ANESTHESIA CONTROL TOWER: BIG BROTHER OR FRIEND?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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The Barnes Jewish Hospital, Washington University, St. 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? How do you feel about all this?

Anesthesiologists at Barnes Jewish Hospital at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri are studying a novel system they call the Anesthesia Control Tower (ACT). The ACT is a telemedicine-based intraoperative clinical support system.  A team led by an attending anesthesiologist uses remote monitoring to provide evidence-based support to anesthesia colleagues in all the operating rooms. The ACT is similar in concept to an air traffic control tower. The clinicians in the Anesthesiology Control Tower, called ACTors, monitor operating rooms (ORs) in real time by following the electronic health records. Just as an air traffic control tower monitors aircraft and delivers information and alerts to the pilots, the ACT communicates with anesthesia providers to assist them in providing safe care.

A press article describing the ACT states: “Surgery is a big insult to the human body. A lot can go wrong. In fact, it does. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of patients who undergo major inpatient surgery experience major complications such as heart attacks, unremitting pain, infections, and blood clots in the weeks to months following their procedures; about two percent are dead within 30 days of surgery. Some of this morbidity and mortality may be preventable through early identification of risk factors and better communication to mitigate risks during the surgery. . . . Air traffic control concepts can predict high risks for healthcare complications and improve decision making.”

The Washington University ACT provides a watchful eye over 60 operating rooms at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, watching over nearly 1,000 patients per week.  

A software program used in the ACT is called AlertWatch®. The ACT anesthesiologist (ACTor) watches a monitor displaying the Tower Mode census view (Figure 1 below), which shows an overview of all the patients in the ORs. Alerts or abnormal vital signs and laboratory results are represented by squares and triangles, respectively. Checkmarks indicate alerts that must be addressed by the ACT. The Tower Mode view looks like this (Figure 1):

 

Figure 1   Census View, Anesthesia Tower

 

The Tower Mode includes a display for each individual patient (Figure 2 below). The organ systems are labeled with relevant physiologic variables and values. Colors outline each organ, and include normal (green), marginal (yellow), or abnormal function (red). The left side of the display shows patient case information. Information regarding the patient’s medical problems can be accessed by selecting the organ system or laboratory study of interest. The black checkmark at the bottom of the left panel indicates that there is an active alert for the ACT clinicians to address (Figure 2 below):

Figure 2 Individual Patient Display, Anesthesia Tower 

 

Clicking on the checkmark opens the case review dialogue, which looks like this (Figure 3):

Figure 3, Case Review Dialogue, Anesthesia Tower

The Anesthesia Control Tower is physically located within the hospital complex, but is remote from the operating rooms. Washington University has expanded the ACT to include the Recovery Control Tower, which provides similar surveillance over patients in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU).

This photograph below depicts the Anesthesia Control Tower manpower at work at Barnes Jewish Hospital at Washington University in St. Louis:

Monitoring surgeries from the Anesthesiology Control Tower (left to right): Omokhaye M. Higo, MD, vice chair for innovation, Thaddeus Budelier, MD, program manager for the Perioperative Innovation Center, and Bradley A. Fritz, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology, Washington University Medical School.

 

Some anesthesiologists were initially skeptical about the ACT idea. But Washington University Anesthesia Chairman Dr. Michael Avidan stated, “Most of the skepticism has evaporated over time as clinicians have perceived that innovation and technology are not threats, but rather enhancements. The conceptualization of our Perioperative Innovation Center is more akin to ‘phone a friend’ than it is to a sinister ‘big brother.’”

Current staffing levels of anesthesia professionals in the United States are inadequate. The shortage of anesthesia professionals, particularly in rural areas, may someday be remedied by a telemedicine system which resembles the ACT.  We may someday see anesthesia managed by less highly trained persons in the OR, with an ACTor backing them up by watching from on high.

Anesthesiologists who supervise Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) or Anesthesia Assistants (AAs) in an anesthesia care team model often have to provide care for multiple patients simultaneously. These attending anesthesiologists cannot physically be present in multiple operating rooms at all times. These anesthesiologists may be aided by Anesthesia Control Tower technology, which continually assesses patients for signs of deterioration and alerts the attending anesthesiologist when an adverse event is brewing.

If the Anesthesia Control Tower is to become a standard in hospital care, we need to know if the ACT changes medical outcomes. Washington University is conducting a study randomizing thousands of adult surgical patients in their operating rooms to an intervention group (ACT) or to a control group without ACT. An estimated 10,000 patients will be enrolled per year, and over four years  approximately 40,000 total patients will be enrolled. Data from this study are as yet unavailable.

The goals of this clinical trial are 1) to develop machine-learning algorithms for forecasting perioperative adverse events; 2) to develop a clinical decision support system that suggests interventions based on the algorithms, and 3) to change the paradigm of perioperative care.

Will physicians and patients see the ACT model in the near future? Significant issues regarding the adoption of Anesthesia Control Tower technology include:

  1. Documenting that ACT provides an improvement. A critical barrier for anesthesiologists, hospitals, and policy makers nationwide will be documenting that the ACT demonstrates an improvement in costs, patient outcomes, or patient experience. None of these things are apparent at this time.
  2. Paying for the ACT equipment and the ACTor on duty will be an issue. Additional hardware and software would be required at each hospital. An in-person anesthesiologist is already being paid to do each case, and the ACTor is another level of anesthesia staffing someone is going to have to pay for.
  3. Anesthesiologist opposition. A challenging barriers will be how anesthesiologists perceive systems like the ACT. Anesthesiologists are trained to be vigilant and manage their patients themselves. Having the ACT peering into the operating room, perhaps with a video camera watching the operating room, will likely be unpopular with the anesthesiologists being observed. There may also be concern that data from the ACT could be used against physicians in the event of a malpractice lawsuit. When the topic of the Anesthesia Control Tower was breached, one of my physician anesthesiologist colleagues remarked, “If that system becomes standard, I’m quitting.”
  4. Lack of need for an ACT in ambulatory settings. According to a 2017 study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the majority of surgical procedures in the United States, fully 70 percent, occur in ambulatory surgery centers or offices outside of hospitals. These outpatient procedures are predominantly smaller surgeries conducted on healthier patients. These smaller ambulatory facilities would have no use for the ACT, both because patients are healthier and because the surgical procedures incur less risk and fewer complications. The costs of an ACT in these smaller settings would be unlikely bring any benefit.
  5. Flawed analogy. Air traffic controllers exist to coordinate takeoffs and landings, so planes do not collide with each other in the air or on the runways. In anesthesiology, operating room patients will not collide with each other and do not have traffic issues with each other. Instead, the Anesthesia Control Tower will scrutinize each patient’s data for abnormalities that will predict a pending complication.
  6. The ACT and the algorithms developed through the ACT will likely be a transitional technology. Having one anesthesiologist (the ACTor) overseeing multiple operating rooms will likely be a steppingstone to Artificial Intelligence technology in which a computer oversees the data from each operating room, with the aim to detect and prevent adverse outcomes from developing. The arrival of ChatGPT foreshadows the AI technology about to bloom in healthcare. In the future the anesthesia provider in each operating room will likely be backed up by AI technology enforcing algorithms, rather than being backed up by a human in a control tower. I described this healthcare evolution in my 2019 book Doctor Vita, in which Artificial Intelligence in the form of inexpensive, internet-connected computers took over a California medical center and changed the face of medicine forever.

Improving vigilance and improving outcomes is the ultimate goal of ACT technology. Further data on the Anesthesia Control Tower will be forthcoming. We’ll await the prospective controlled studies, and then we’ll all learn whether or not this technology is an advance to help patients and physicians.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include: How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia? Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia? Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia? What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications? How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century? Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia? What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include: 10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6? 12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99? Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

DAMAR HAMLIN AND THE DOCTORS ON AN NFL SIDELINE

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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On January 3rd 2023, 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest when he collapsed after  experiencing a helmet-to-his-sternum tackle against the Cincinnati Bengals. Hamlin received CPR (CardioPulmonary Resuscitation) on the field, and his heartbeat was restored before he was taken to a Cincinnati hospital. Was there an anesthesiologist involved in Damar Hamlin’s resuscitation? Yes, either an anesthesiologist or an emergency room doctor who was an airway expert was involved in Damar’s successful resuscitation.

According to Dr. William A. Knight IV, a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, who led the team treating Damar Hamlin: “He (Damar) was not trached on the field. He was intubated on the field, had what I would deem a textbook resuscitation on the field from, again, immediate bystander CPR, defibrillation, airway management and then transport to the hospital. It’s critical that we do that resuscitation at the scene of where a cardiac arrest is. That portends the best recovery. There was no trach or airway other than the endotracheal tube that he has.”

The immediate resuscitation of a witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest such as Damar Hamlin’s included: 1) the assessment that he was not breathing;  2) the assessment that his heart was not beating;  3) chest compressions (CPR); followed by 4) the application of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) which diagnosed the heart rhythm and shocked the patient.

The cardiac rhythm responsible for most sudden cardiac arrests is ventricular fibrillation, in which the heart muscle merely quivers and fails to eject any blood as in a normal beating heart. Shocking the patient’s chest is usually successful in converting ventricular fibrillation into a return to normal cardiac rhythm with the return of normal spontaneous circulation (ROSC).

ECG of normal heart rhythm

 

ECG of ventricular fibrillation, showing chaotic electrical activity with no normal rhythm

 

The measures of the Cincinnati medical team were successful in Damar Hamlin’s case, and he was moved into the EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) ambulance. I have not been able to locate any video evidence from the football field showing placement of the endotracheal tube by the airway specialist. Per Dr. Knight’s comments above, the endotracheal tube may have been placed once Damar was inside the ambulance.

Once Damar’s heartbeat was restored and breathing of 100% oxygen was applied via the endotracheal tube, the initial acute resuscitation of Airway-Breathing-Circulation (A-B-C) were completed.

More details of Damar Hamlin’s hospital course were supplied in Dr. Knight’s interview.

The remainder of Damar’s medical records are protected healthcare information, and will not be available to the media or the public. In all probability, Damar was placed under general anesthetic intravenous sedation in the Intensive Care Unit while a ventilator did the breathing for him. Damar may have been treated with hypothermia (lowering his body temperature to around 89°F to 93°F). Per Johns Hopkins Medicine, “Therapeutic hypothermia can be a good choice if the heart restarted but you are still not responsive. It can raise the chance that you will wake up. Experts are not sure why lowering the body’s temperature reduces brain damage. The chemical reactions of the body slow down. The lowered temperature may also lessen inflammation in the brain. Both of these factors may help reduce injury. . . . Hypothermic treatment usually lasts about 24 hours.”

When the medical team turned off the intravenous general anesthetic sedatives, Damar’s neurologic function was intact, which was a wonderful outcome. While the endotracheal tube was in place he could not speak, and initially he had to communicate by pen and paper. At first Damar seemed to require high doses of oxygen via the endotracheal breathing tube, but the percentage of oxygen in his inhaled gases was progressively lowered as his lung function improved. Per Dr. Knight, Damar had a form of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) secondary to his acute event. As Damar’s lungs improved, the oxygen concentration in his inhaled gases could be decreased toward the room air concentration of 21% oxygen that we are all breathing, and his endotracheal tube could be removed.

As of January 9th 2023, Damar was moved from a hospital in Cincinnati to a hospital in Buffalo, New York, and was doing well.

January 8th, 2023, Damar Hamlin awake in the University of Cincinnati Medical Center

 

To put Damar Hamlin’s resuscitation in context, I’m republishing the following paragraphs from an article I wrote in April 2017 regarding anesthesiologists and acute medical care preparation on site at an NFL game:

 

The National Football League (NFL) of American football is a multibillion-dollar industry which dominates the sports airwaves and press headlines from the first preseason game each August until the Super Bowl each February. Do you know the intersection between an anesthesiologist and the NFL? At each and every NFL game there must be one Airway Management Physician on the sideline. This Airway Management Physician is most commonly an anesthesiologist or an emergency medicine physician. My anesthesia company had the contract for the San Francisco 49ers Airway Management Physician during the 2005-2006 season, and I worked in this role. It was a fascinating job, and in this column I’ll fill you in on the experience.

Why must every NFL game have an Airway Management Physician on the field? Football is a violent sport played by young men of unprecedented speed and size. When these men collide there is always the risk of injury. The NFL Physicians Society (NFLPS) mandates a 27-person game-day medical staff.

nflhealthcarechart

Each sideline includes 2 orthopedists, 2 primary care physicians, 4 athletic trainers, 1 unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant, and 1 chiropractor. In addition, the Stadium Medical Team includes 1 dentist, 1 ophthalmologist, 1 Airway Management Physician, 2 Emergency Medical Technicians, 2 independent athletic trainers, 1 radiology technician, and 1 visiting team medical liaison.

During the game, common football injuries to the knee, ankle, foot, shoulder, elbow, or hand are matters for the team orthopedic specialists, the athletic trainers, and perhaps the chiropractor. Injuries to the head activate a concussion protocol in which the neurological examination is carried out with the aid of the neurotrauma consultant.

The Airway Management Physician is present in case of a severe medical complication. This would include a cardiac arrest, a respiratory arrest, a cervical spine injury, or an airway injury which impairs breathing. In these situations the acute medical management must follow the standard sequence of Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. The player’s airway must be open and secured prior to any effective breathing or cardiac care. If the player’s airway is not open, the Airway Management Physician is responsible for placing a breathing tube through the player’s mouth into his windpipe so oxygen can be effectively ventilated in and out of the lungs. The absence of oxygen to a patient’s brain for 3-5 minutes can cause permanent brain damage.

The NFL game day Airway Management Physician will be an experienced anesthesiologist or emergency room doctor, because these are the two specialties which deal with the placement of urgent breathing tubes in hospital operating rooms, emergency rooms, or intensive care units.

The urgent placement of an airway tube is called a Rapid Sequence Intubation, or RSI. Anesthesiologists routinely use RSI technique to place a breathing tube into a patient’s windpipe prior to emergency surgery. Emergency surgery patients are always classified as “full stomach” patients, meaning that they have not fasted for the required 8 hours prior to elective surgery. Patients who have full stomachs are at risk for vomiting their stomach contents into their lungs. This can be a lethal complication. In my 30+-year career as an anesthesia attending, I’ve placed thousands of RSI breathing tubes prior to surgeries. Emergency room physicians place RSI breathing tubes for various causes including trauma, cardiac arrests, or respiratory arrests.

 

To perform a RSI, the anesthesiologist or emergency room doctor will administer a hypnotic drug (such as propofol or ketamine) if the patient is conscious, followed by a paralyzing drug (such as succinylcholine or rocuronium). At the same time, a medical colleague (a surgeon or a nurse) will press down on the cricoid cartilage at the anterior aspect of the patient’s voice box. This is called a Sellick maneuver or cricoid pressure, and this serves to compress cricoid cartilage (which circles the windpipe) downward against the esophagus to reduce the chance of stomach contents regurgitating into the mouth and/or lungs.

A doctor using a laryngoscope to place an endotracheal tube into a football player’s trachea.

 

Next the anesthesiologist or emergency room doctor inserts a lighted instrument called a laryngoscope into the patient’s mouth, to identify and visualize the opening to the trachea or windpipe. The physician then inserts a hollow plastic breathing tube called an endotracheal tube (ET tube) into the windpipe. The ET tube has an inflatable balloon near its tip. Once the ET tube is in place, the physician inflates the balloon to secure a tight fit within the windpipe. Oxygen can then be ventilated in and out of the tube via a breathing bag.

A RSI is a stressful acute medical procedure in which there is little room or time for error. If the physician has difficulty inserting the breathing tube and the patient has no oxygen entry, the patient can suffer anoxic brain damage within 3-5 minutes. In a hospital setting, even when the physician has all the necessary equipment at his or her fingertips, a RSI can be a harrowing experience. Trying to execute a RSI on the 50-yard-line of a football field, on a 300-pound athlete with a thick neck and who is wearing bulky shoulder pads and perhaps a football helmet, under national television audience scrutiny, would be stressful to the extreme.

No NFL player to date has ever had a cardiac or respiratory arrest on the football field during a game. On August 20th, 2005, San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Thomas Herrion collapsed and died the locker room after a preseason game in Denver. Per a personal account from a physician present in the locker room at the time, the team had gathered around and closed their eyes to say the Lord’s Prayer, and during that prayer they heard a loud thump. They opened their eyes to see Herrion lying on the ground unconscious and seizing. No anesthesiologist or emergency room physician was present. The physicians who were present attempted to revive Herrion. He was transported to St. Anthony’s Central Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Per coroner Amy Martin, a forensic pathologist in Denver, Herrion weighed 335 pounds and was 6 feet 3 inches tall. His autopsy was positive for significant blockage of the right coronary artery, and his cause of death was listed as heart disease. His blood tests were negative for any steroids or performance-enhancing drugs. He entered the game for about 20 plays near the end of the game, and he appeared to be in normal physical condition prior to entering the locker room.

In the weeks following Herrion’s death, my anesthesia company was hired to be the Airway Management Physicians for the remainder of that 49ers season. I was the Airway Management Physician for the September 25, 2005 game between the 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Prior to the game we dressed in team medical polo shirts in the team locker room with the other members of the medical team. Some physicians were engaged in pregame consultations with the trainers regarding players with injuries or ailments. Before the game I joined a group of physicians who walked to the opposing sideline to introduce ourselves to members of the Cowboys medical team. Just prior to kickoff, when the 49ers ran out of their locker room onto the field, we physicians walked just behind them. The soundtrack to our stadium entrance was the same roaring ovation that the sellout crowd gave their football heroes—it was an unforgettable experience.

I was given a small, 10 X 4 X 4-inch pouch labeled “RSI equipment.” Inside were the necessary items: the laryngoscope, the syringes, and the drugs necessary for a routine Rapid Sequence Intubation. I must confess that for multiple reasons I was praying I would not intubating a 335-pound lineman with the contents of that pouch on that day. Along with the other members of the medical team, I was instructed to remain between the 30-yard-line and the goal line on either end of the field, and not to enter the team bench area between the 30-yard-lines. I was given a red hat to wear so I could be easily identified in an emergency situation. I remained in the immediate vicinity of the other team doctors so I was ready for a team approach should an emergency occur. I watched the game vigilantly so I would be ready should an emergency occur.

There were no cardiac arrests or fractured cervical spines, and my services were not required on that Sunday. Following that season the 49ers contracted with the full-time faculty of Stanford Medical Center to be their Airway Management Physicians, and I never had the opportunity to reprise the experience of that one 49ers-Dallas game.

I was left with several lasting impressions regarding the NFL anesthesiologist experience:

  1. The sheer size of the linemen makes their airways potentially difficult to manage. I performed anesthetics on multiple San Francisco 49ers players for orthopedic surgeries over 15 years time. Their cardiovascular fitness was never in question, but their bulk was striking. A Body Mass Index (BMI) table states that a 335 pound, 6 foot 3 inch patient has a BMI=41. A BMI over 40 is defined as Morbid Obesity, and this is always a significant anesthesia concern. Morbid Obesity carries a risk classification of American Society of Anesthesiologists Class 3, which is defined as “a patient with a severe medical disease which is currently stable.” A professional athlete is more healthy than an inactive couch potato fan who watches the NFL on television, but nonetheless anesthetizing gigantic men requires skill and entails risk.
  2. A second lasting impression is that the RSI pouch I was given in 2005 would be woefully inadequate in 2023. An essential tool to intubate a 300-pound giant wearing football gear is a portable video laryngoscope, such as the McGrath 5: hqdefaultThis is a handheld tool with a camera on one end and a video screen on the other. The video laryngoscope allows the physician to see around the curves of a large man’s tongue and jaw, and to visualize the opening to the windpipe without moving or extending the cervical spine (which in some football injuries must be suspected of having an unstable fracture). I’m certain that modern day RSI equipment at NFL games includes not only a portable videoscope but also a larger array of breathing tubes and airway management tools such as you’d find in a difficult airway cart in an operating room or an emergency room. The American Society of Anesthesiologists Difficult Airway Algorithm references the optimal approach to any airway difficulty, and an airway emergency on an NFL playing field would be best managed per this Algorithm.
  3. My third profound recollection is how memorable it was to be on the sideline for an NFL game, and how memorable it was to witness the spectacle up close. My own football skills never advanced past 3-on-3 touch football, but I’m a fan, and I’ll always remember my adventure as a member of the medical team for America’s number one sports attraction.

 

All our thoughts and prayers are with Damar Hamlin for his continued recovery in January 2023. The NFL’s preparation for acute cardiac arrest injuries proved successful in his case.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

 

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

 

ANESTHESIOLOGY VS. DERMATOLOGY

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Dermatology and anesthesiology are two medical specialties which offer lifestyle balance. Dermatology is consistently one of the most competitive residencies for graduating medical students. In a ranking of the most competitive medical specialties, dermatology ranked second, trailing only plastic surgery.  Dermatology was also ranked as the number-one specialty in terms of work-lifestyle balance. Dermatology is a high-paying medical specialty with almost no emergencies, weekend duties, or night call. Dermatologists can take weeks off work without losing their entire practice. Dermatologists perform procedures with their hands, including biopsies or the resection of lesions. Dermatologists have important roles treating common problems such as chronic acne or diagnosing life-threatening melanomas. Dermatology clinic is known for short visits and long lists of patients. If a patient has multiple medical comorbidities such as hypertension, heart problems, obesity, or sleep apnea, these issues are usually unrelated to the dermatology consultation. Hypertension, heart problems, obesity, and sleep apnea are problems for the patient’s internal medicine doctor, not for the dermatologist. A career in anesthesiology seems markedly different than a career in dermatology, because anesthesiologists frequently deal with acutely ill patients, middle of the night emergency surgeries, and complex anesthetics for open heart, brain, or neonatal surgeries. But one large subset of anesthesia work closely mimics the lifestyle of dermatology practice. Before you sign up for a lifetime as a dermatologist, consider the subspecialty of ambulatory anesthesiology.

Ambulatory anesthesiology is defined as the administration of anesthetics for outpatient surgical procedures, which are minor procedures which don’t require hospitalization. Most anesthetics in the United States are for ambulatory surgeries. In 2014 there were 11 million outpatient surgeries, which was 52% of the total number of surgeries. Outpatient surgeries include tonsillectomy, knee arthroscopy, shoulder arthroscopy, breast biopsy, hernia repair, rhinoplasty, hand surgery, foot surgery, nasal septoplasty, colonoscopy, and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. These procedures are low-risk surgeries which don’t disturb a patient’s physiology in any significant way. Ambulatory surgery patients are prescreened to eliminate those with medical problems such as morbid obesity, severe sleep apnea, or unstable cardiac, respiratory, or neurologic diagnoses. An anesthesiologist practicing 100% in an ambulatory surgery center should have zero emergency anesthetics, zero weekend duty, and zero night call. 

The duration of training for an anesthesiologist and a dermatologist is identical. Both specialties require four years of college, four years of medical school, a one-year medical internship, and three years of residency training. For either specialty, if you graduate high school at age 18, you’ll be at least 30 years old when you finish training and are ready to begin your career. A significant amount of deferred gratification is required for both specialties. Your friends who went to work straight out of college will be at least eight years ahead of you in the game of life, and may have already accumulated a mortgage and 1.93 children during the years you’ve been working as a resident physician and memorizing massive quantities of medical knowledge. Anesthesia will never be as safe or predictable as dermatology.  Anesthesia residents are required to manage all forms of cases, including open-heart surgeries, neurosurgeries, trauma surgeries, Cesarean sections, and emergent chest or abdominal surgeries. Major complications are rare in outpatient anesthesia, but if one is inducing general anesthesia, then unexpected complications of airway, breathing, or circulation (the ABCs) can occur.

Both dermatology and anesthesiology are high-paying specialties. See the list below. The average salary for a dermatologist is $438,000 (7thhighest of all specialties), and the average salary for an anesthesiologist is 405,000 (11th highest of all specialties). 

Samuel Shem’s classic medical satire “The House of God,” followed a cadre of burned-out internal medicine residents through their internship year. At the end of the book, the residents reached the conclusion that their best futures were in the NPC—Non-Patient Care—specialties, which numbered six and only six: Rays, Gas, Path, Derm, Eyes, and Psych, that is: radiology, anesthesiology, pathology, dermatology, ophthalmology, and psychiatry. The main character in “The House of God” switched his specialty from internal medicine to psychiatry. In my career I switched from internal medicine to anesthesiology. Anesthesiology is not truly a “Non-Patient Care” specialty. Anesthesiologists very much care for patients every day. A key difference is that anesthesiologists care for each patient for a short and finite time. We don’t have to deal with a patient’s chronic problems over many years, as their internal medicine doctor must do. 

An experienced anesthesiologist may eventually land a fulltime job at an ambulatory surgery center (ASC), and at that point he or she may confine his or her career to a stable weekday life of outpatient surgeries, but this ascension to ambulatory-only anesthesiologist is not common. Most career anesthesiologists who practice in ambulatory surgery centers also continue to practice at a hospital. Most general anesthesiologists need to master both inpatient and outpatient surgeries.

Is it possible to jump directly from the completion of an anesthesia residency to a solely ambulatory practice, thus mimicking the lifestyle of dermatology? In the past, I’d say the answer was no. In recent years the lack of an adequate number of anesthesiologists has created a supply-demand situation in which outpatient surgery centers have insufficient numbers of anesthesiology staff. In some geographic markets, outpatient surgery centers may choose to hire young residents right out of training. I direct you to the recent employment ad below, which promises a salary of $385,000 to $4000,000 per year for an ambulatory anesthesiology job with “No nights, weekends, holidays, trauma, hearts, neuro or OB.”

If you’re interested in a quality lifestyle medical career with regular hours, weekends off, and few emergencies, add the option of ambulatory anesthesiologist to your list of possible choices. But to gain entrance to the Emerald City of ambulatory anesthesiology, you’ll have to walk a Yellow Brick Road through a challenging anesthesia residency first. In all probability, you’ll spend your early career doing some inpatient emergency anesthesia as well. But an eventual career in ambulatory anesthesiology is an outstanding option in which you can anesthetize patients on a  weekday schedule, spend weekends and evenings with your family, and turn the ringer off on your cell phone when you go to sleep at night.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
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READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON BLOODY CESAREAN SECTION: A DOCTOR’S PERSPECTIVE

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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(SPOILER ALERT – CONTAINS PLOT REVELATIONS FROM HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, SEASON 1 EPISODE 1) Twenty million people tuned in to watch the first week of HBO’s House of the Dragon (the Game of Thrones prequel). The first episode contained a gory scene of an awake Cesarean section. Queen Aemma was in the process of giving birth to a male heir, the baby was presenting feet first (breech), and was stuck,and could not be delivered vaginally. Grand Maester Mellos (a medieval physician-equivalent) offered a potential solution to the king. He said, “During a difficult birth, it sometimes becomes necessary for the father to make an impossible choice. To sacrifice one, or to lose them both. There is a chance that we can save the child. A technique that is taught at the Citadel—which involves cutting directly into the womb to free the infant. We must either act now or leave it with the gods.” Soon after that conversation a knife descended as Mellos cut into the queen’s abdomen while she screamed and the king whispered into her ear that he loved her. The blood loss from the procedure left the queen dead from hemorrhagic shock. On the day following the broadcast, social media erupted at this non-consensual torture waged against the mother.

From a doctor’s perspective, could this fictional scene really have happened centuries ago? It’s a fact that cutting a child out from his mother’s womb was a death sentence for the mother in an era prior to the discovery of anesthesia and prior to the discovery of surgical techniques to control bleeding and infection. In the real history of our world, it’s unlikely any husband or family was offered the choice whether to sacrifice the birthing mother to save the child. Most Cesarean sections were done because the mother was already dead and cutting into the womb was a last gasp measure to save the child’s life. As House of the Dragon depicted, in primitive times there was no way to stop the acute bleeding from Cesarean incisions into the abdomen and the uterus. 

Cutting a child out from the uterus has been called a Cesarean section for centuries. Julius Caesar himself was not born from the procedure, as his mother did not die during his childbirth—she lived until Caesar’s mid-40s.  Cesarean section did have a significant role in a Shakespeare tragedy other than Julius Caesar.  In Shakespeare’s Macbeth the witches’ prophecy was that “. . . none of woman born/ Shall harm Macbeth.” (Act IV. Scene i) The Scottish nobleman Macduff was “from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripped.” (Act V. scene vii) That is, Macduff was born by Cesarean section, and not naturally born of woman. Macduff eventually killed Macbeth in battle. 

The first known Cesarean section in which both the mother and child survived was performed in Prague in 1337.  The first successful Cesarean section to be performed in the United States took place in Virginia in 1794. Nonetheless, in Great Britain and Ireland in 1865 the mortality for Cesarean section was 85%. 

The medical advances that enabled nearly all women to survive Cesarean section were: 1) the discovery of sterile surgical practices of handwashing and antisepsis to prevent postoperative infections; 2) the discovery of surgical techniques to stop bleeding; and 3) the discovery of anesthesia.

Sterile surgical procedures began when Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, noted in 1847 that fewer women died from post-surgery fever if surgeons washed their hands. Years later Dr. Louis Pasteur and Dr. Joseph Lister provided evidence to explain germ theory. Dr. Lister’s principles of antiseptic care led the way to asepsis, which was the complete elimination of bacteria during surgery. 

Until the 1870s Cesarean section surgical technique to control bleeding remained crude, and did not include surgical suture closure. In 1882 the German obstetricians Dr. Adolf Kehrer and Dr. Max Sänger developed methods for preventing uterine bleeding by using suture (stitches) to close the wound. 

Prior to the discovery of general anesthesia, sedation for surgery usually included oral alcohol drinks, or opiates derived from poppies. General anesthesia was discovered in October 1846, when Dr. William Morton gave a public demonstration of inhaled ether use at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. One year later, James Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician, administered ether to relieve the pain of childbirth for a woman with an abnormal pelvis. In 1853 Dr. John Snow gave Queen Victoria the inhaled anesthetic chloroform to relieve labor pain during the birth of her eighth child.

A modern Cesarean section is most often done under a spinal or epidural anesthetic. The anesthesiologist injects a local anesthetic drug into the mother’s low back to render her numb from the level of her nipples to her toes. Under this regional anesthetic, a mother can be awake to bond with her infant minutes after the child is born. In emergency circumstances, general anesthesia may be required for Cesarean section. In these situations, a general anesthetic drug such as propofol is injected into the mother’s intravenous line, rendering her unconscious within 20-30 seconds. The anesthesiologist then inserts an endotracheal breathing tube into the mother’s windpipe (trachea) to ensure that oxygen and anesthesia gases are delivered directly and safely into the lungs, and at the same time eliminating the risk of stomach contents regurgitating into the mother’s lungs.

In the United States today, Cesarean deliveries comprise a stunning 1/3 of the total number of births. Attempts to reduce the rate of Cesarean sections have been largely unsuccessful because of the perceived safety of the operation, the medical-legal climate, and maternal requests for Cesarean sections. Cesarean sections carry a higher maternal mortality risk compared with vaginal birth. In a retrospective study of 1.5 million deliveries between 2000 and 2006, the rate of maternal death was 0.2 per 100,000 for vaginal births, and 2.2 per 100,0000 for Cesarean deliveries.  

Cesarean sections in the United States today are typically controlled surgeries, with comfortable mothers and with the father present in the operating room holding the mother’s hand. Expectant mothers can be reassured that because of advances in anesthesia and surgery, the pain, horror, and lethal outcome from a Cesarean section as depicted in the House of the Dragon will not occur in the modern world of medicine.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

ANESTHESIOLOGISTS COVERING THREE OR FOUR OPERATING ROOMS AT ONCE CAN INCREASE RISKS 

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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JAMA Surgery published the study “Association of Anesthesiologist Staffing Ratio With Surgical Patient Morbidity and Mortality” on July 22, 2022. This was a landmark paper on the topic of anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios, which documented that having physician anesthesiologists direct three or four operating rooms simultaneously for major noncardiac inpatient surgical procedures increased the 30-day risks of patient morbidity and mortality. The senior author was Sachin Kheterpal, MD, MBA, of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. The data was from a retrospective matched cohort study of major noncardiac inpatient surgical procedures performed from January 1, 2010, to October 31, 2017, and was conducted in 23 academic and private hospitals in the United States. 

The University of Michigan paper stated, “this study primarily analyzed physician-CRNA teams, the dominant practice model in US anesthesiology.” The physician-CRNA team, otherwise known as an anesthesia care team, is a model strongly supported by the American Society of Anesthesiologists.  The anesthesia care team is a system in which one anesthesiologist covers one, two, three, or four separate operating rooms, each room staffed by a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) or an anesthesia assistant (AA). From a very large initial data set of 3,624,399 operations, the University of Michigan authors calculated the staffing ratio of physician anesthesiologist: CRNA for each operation. The following types of cases were excluded: anesthesia care personally performed by a physician anesthesiologist working alone; anesthesia care which involved an anesthesia assistant; anesthesia care involving an anesthesia resident; and anesthesia care that occurred overnight, during weekends, or on holidays. After these exclusions were applied, the data set consisted of 866,453 operations, in which 1960 anesthesiologists provided care in 23 different hospitals.

Data was divided into four groups:

  • Group 1: one anesthesiologist covering one operation (48,555 patients)
  • Group 1-2 (reference group): one anesthesiologist covering more than one to no more than two overlapping operations (247,057 patients)
  • Group 2-3: one anesthesiologist covering more than two to no more than three overlapping operations (216,193 patients)
  • Group 3-4: one anesthesiologist covering more than three to no more than four overlapping operations (67,010 patients)

The four groups were studied regarding 30-day morbidity and mortality outcome data. The morbidities included cardiac, respiratory, gastrointestinal, urinary, bleeding, and infectious complications. Overall, morbidity and mortality occurred after 30,026 operations (5.19%).

The results:

Compared with patients in group 1-2, those in group 2-3 had a 4% relative increase in mortality and morbidity (5.06% vs 5.25%; P = .02). 

Compared with patients in group 1-2, those in group in group 3-4 had a 14% increase in risk-adjusted mortality and morbidity (5.06% vs 5.75%; P < .001).

The paper stated, “When 100,000 operations, which is typical annually for a major medical center, are considered, the increase in risk from 5.06% to 5.75% that we observed would translate to an additional 690 operations with adverse outcomes,” and “increased overlapping anesthesiologist coverage beyond 1 to 2 operations was associated with an increased risk of surgical patient morbidity and 30-day mortality. Because 313 million surgical procedures are performed worldwide each year, any small individual improvements in outcome can have major repercussions for public health. These results complement previous studies that have shown improved 30-day mortality and morbidity rates after complications when anesthesiologists directed anesthesia care.”

The results of this study may be criticized because the data was retrospective, but it’s unlikely any prospective study will ever be done randomizing major noncardiac inpatient surgeries to anesthesiologist:CRNA ratios of 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, and 1:4. The adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) brought on the arrival of Big Data such as in this paper, in which a Herculean total of over 3.6 million charts were studied. An EMR enables physicians to study trends and outcome data in ways that were previously impossible. Does the data from the University of Michigan study support the fact that decreased staffing by physician anesthesiologists in major noncardiac inpatient surgical procedures is associated with increased 30-day morbidity and mortality? Yes, it does. Will this conclusion change the future practice of anesthesiology? Perhaps, but probably not. Why not? Let’s examine the most likely reasons behind the increased anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios:

  1. There may be an inadequate supply of physician anesthesiologists to staff all major noncardiac inpatient surgical procedures at anesthesiologist:CRNA ratios of 1:1 or 1:2. There were 31,130 anesthesiologists in the United States in 2021, and more than 55,000 CRNAs in the United States. There were approximately 21 million surgeries per year in the United States in 2014.   The ratio of the number of surgeries compared to the number of anesthesiologists (21,000,000/31,130) equals 675 surgeries per anesthesiologist, a busy caseload. But the geographical distribution of where anesthesiologists live is not random, with populations of MD anesthesiologists concentrated in urban and suburban areas, and populations of MD anesthesiologists less concentrated in rural areas. Some locations have an inadequate census of physician anesthesiologists to staff every case as solo practitioners or at an anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio of 1:1 or 1:2. 
  2. A higher anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio may be a strategy to decrease the cost of anesthesia care. This issue was examined in detail in the American Society of Anesthesiologists Monitor.  In this study, the reported average yearly salary for a CRNA was $202,000, and they worked 40 hours per week. The reported average yearly salary for a private practice anesthesiologist was $440,000, and they worked 55 hours per week.  Cost-analysis showed that with adequate numbers of CRNAs to staff anesthesia care teams and to cover breaks for working CRNAs, the anesthesiologist:CRNA ratios of 1:2 and 1:3 were actually more expensive than running the rooms with a solo anesthesiologist in each room. An anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio of 1:4 was only marginally (< 10%) less costly than running the rooms with a solo anesthesiologist in each room. 
Figure 3: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with break staff included. Because one needs 1.25 CRNAs per site to cover the 10-hour shifts, the cost savings for anesthesia care team model is further reduced. Anesthesia care team costs are compared to physician-only (MD-only). Spikes in costs are when the number of sites cannot be divided by the staffing ratio. 

3. A high anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio may increase the income per anesthesiologist. When one anesthesiologist directs multiple CRNAs in multiple operating rooms, that solitary physician anesthesiologist can increase his billing for the day. “Medical direction of 2-4 concurrent anesthesia procedures: When two to four concurrent anesthesia procedures are medically directed, report with modifier QK. Services submitted with modifier QK will be reimbursed at 50% of the applicable fee.” 

Medical direction of four CRNAs –> the anesthesiologist can bill 50% of Physician Allowed Amount and 50% of CRNA Allowed Amount.

With four operating rooms directed by one anesthesiologist, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th operating rooms can each be billed at 50% of the anesthesia fee. Billing for four rooms simultaneously can increase the income for that solitary anesthesiologist over that time period. An anesthesiologist working alone, without CRNAs, can only attend to one patient, and can only bill services for a single patient. An analogy is a taxicab or Uber driver who can only bill for one ride at a time. The only way for a solo taxi driver or Uber driver to earn more money is to give more rides, and the only way for a solo anesthesiologist to earn more money is to do more cases for more hours of time.

The senior author of the University of Michigan study was Sachin Kheterpal, MD, MBA from the Department of Anesthesiology, yet the study was published in a surgical journal, JAMA Surgery, rather than an anesthesiology journal.Did anesthesiology journals reject the opportunity to publish the study? I don’t know. It’s pertinent that surgeons care greatly about the outcomes of surgeries they perform, and surgeons are less concerned with the economics of anesthesia staffing. Surgeons reading this study will no doubt conclude that an anesthesia group covering major noncardiac inpatient surgical cases with 1:3 or 1:4 anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios are exposing their patients to an increased risk of morbidity and mortality.

Will this study change the anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios in the future? My gut impression is that it will not. Anesthesiologists do not routinely read JAMA Surgery and may be quick to dismiss the findings. Surgeons may complain to their anesthesia colleagues that they do not want 1:3 or 1:4 anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios for their major noncardiac inpatient surgical patients, but it’s unlikely they will have any power to enact change if the anesthesiologists don’t want to change. Why would anesthesiologists not move away from 1:3 or 1:4 anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratios? See the three reasons above: an inadequate supply of physician anesthesiologists; the quest to decrease anesthesia costs; and the goal of maximizing anesthesiologist income by directing 3 or 4 operating rooms at the same time.

I asked the anesthesia chairman of a large health-maintenance organization (HMO) how his group assigned anesthesia staffing, and his reply was that they used tiered staffing. A demanding case such as an open-heart surgery or a craniotomy was staffed by a solo physician anesthesiologist. In contrast, simple low-risk cases such as bunion repairs or carpal tunnel repairs on healthy patients were staffed by the maximal anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio of 1:4. The spectrum of remaining cases fell between these two extremes, and the anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio was assigned according to the difficulty and the risk of the anesthetic.

As a patient, how do you feel about all this? Would you be concerned if you were to be anesthetized by an anesthesia care team utilizing a 1:3 or 1:4 anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratio? In the University of Michigan study, if your surgery was a major noncardiac inpatient surgery during daytime hours, the data showed that your anesthesia team is putting you at increased risk for 30-day morbidity and mortality. The University of Michigan study only examined inpatient surgeries, so if you’re having outpatient ambulatory surgery, this study does not apply to your surgery. In 2014, outpatient surgery outnumbered inpatient surgery by 11,474,800 to 10,303,000. But if you or your family member are scheduled for major noncardiac inpatient surgery, it’s important to ask the question of what the anesthesiologist:CRNA staffing ratio will be while you or your family member are asleep, and how much of the time will your anesthesiologist be in the operating room.

If I was to be cared for by an anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio of 1:3 or 1:4 for a major noncardiac inpatient surgery during daytime hours, I would raise an objection before the anesthetic started, and I would direct my objection at both the attending anesthesiologist and the attending surgeon. Based on the data from the University of Michigan study, I would request an anesthesiologist:CRNA ratio of no higher than 1:2, or I would request a solo anesthesiologist to attend to me.

I’d suggest you do the same.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

QUANTITATIVE NEUROMUSCULAR MONITORING –  NECESSITY OR TECHNOLOGY OVERDONE?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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A QUANTITATIVE NEUROMUSCULAR MONITOR

How do anesthesiologists monitor the degree to which a patient’s muscles are pharmaceutically paralyzed during an anesthetic? A recent publication in our specialty’s most prestigious journal urges the use of a QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring machine to do this when general anesthetics include a paralytic drug. The article was not a prospective randomized study, but rather a retrospective (from 2016 to 2020) practice initiative from a solitary medical center. The goal of the authors (Weigel et al) was to measure the reversal of neuromuscular paralysis in all anesthetized patients at the end of their anesthetic, and to document that reversal in the patient’s chart.

Their measured goal was to document a train-of-four ratio of greater than or equal to 0.9 prior to extubation in each anesthetized patient. What is a train-of-four? A locomotive with four cars? Alas no. A train-of-four ratio is a monitor of the level of neuromuscular blockade. Four consecutive electronic stimuli are delivered along the path of a patient’s nerve. The twitch response of the muscle is measured in order to evaluate stimuli that are blocked, versus those that are delivered. Four consecutive muscle contractions of equal strength (a score = 1.0) occur if there is no neuromuscular blockade. If neuromuscular blockade is present, there will be a loss of twitch height of the final twitch compared to the first twitch, and the resulting ratio of the final twitch height/first twitch height (e.g. 4/5 = 0.8) will indicate the degree of blockade. The clinical concern is that a ratio of lower than 0.9 correlates with a weak patient who may not safely ventilate himself/herself.

The conclusion of the Weigel study boldly states, “Anesthesia providers are solely responsible for properly rescuing patients from the states of paralyses they initiate. This should occur for ALL PATIENTS as verified by QUANTITATIVE measurement and documentation of train-of-four ratios greater than or equal to 0.9.” (Capital letters added by me.) 

Should the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) add QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring as a standard of care? 

Hmm. This would be a marked change because, to my observation, almost no anesthesia providers routinely use QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring at this time.

The authors’ goal of documenting a train-of-four ratio greater than or equal to 0.9 requires the purchase of QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring equipment in every anesthetizing location. The cost of each monitor was approximately $1,995, with the disposable costs of $20 to $25 per patient. An example QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitor is shown here:  

TwitchView QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitor

The article states, “The dangers of paralyzing a patient with neuromuscular blocking drugs are well recognized. Despite advances in anesthetic management, approximately half of all patients arriving to the postanesthesia care unit (PACU) suffer from residual blockade defined as a train-of-four ratio less than 0.9.” They cite a previous article from Anesthesia and Analgesia in 2018 which stated: “whenever a neuromuscular blocker is administered, neuromuscular function must be monitored by observing the evoked muscular response to peripheral nerve stimulation. Ideally, this should be done at the hand muscles (not the facial muscles) with a quantitative (objective) monitor. Objective monitoring (documentation of train-of-four ratio ≥0.90) is the only method of assuring that satisfactory recovery of neuromuscular function has taken place. (Bold emphasis added by me.) The panel also recommends that subjective evaluation of the responses to train-of-four stimulation (when using a peripheral nerve stimulator) or clinical tests of recovery from neuromuscular block (such as the 5-second head lift) should be abandoned in favor of objective monitoring.”

The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) sets the standard of care for intraoperative monitoring. The ASA Standard of Anesthesia Monitoring currently does not mandate any form of neuromuscular monitoring. The ASA Standard of Anesthesia Monitoring is the gold standard for all operating room monitoring, is followed by all training programs, and is referred to in courts of law as the standard of care should an adverse anesthesia outcome occur. 

A 2010 survey of anesthesia providers documented that 19.3% of Europeans and 9.4% of Americans never use neuromuscular monitors. The majority of respondents from the US (64.1%) and Europe (52.2%) estimated the incidence of clinically significant postoperative residual neuromuscular weakness to be <1% (P<0.0001). Most respondents in this study reported that “neither conventional nerve stimulators nor quantitative train-of-four monitors should be part of minimum monitoring standards.”

I suggest three values in anesthetic care: Do the right thing, be safe, and Keep It Simple Stupid (the KISS principle). Rather than strapping a thumb monitor onto every one of my patients, I’m a disciple of qualitative neuromuscular monitoring—a less technologically complex form of monitoring. When I was serving my residency training in anesthesiology at Stanford in the 1980s, each resident was equipped with a MiniStim nerve stimulator, which is a qualitative neuromuscular monitor. 

MiniStim qualitative neuromuscular monitor

A qualitative neuromuscular monitoring device is simple to use. When the two terminals are applied to the facial nerve lateral to the eye of a sleeping patient and the green button is pushed, the orbital muscles will twitch if unparalyzed, and they will not twitch if paralyzed. With experience one can easily discern whether the patient is paralyzed or not, and one can estimate the degree of paralysis. The MiniStim also has a tetanus feature. When the two terminals are applied to the facial nerve lateral to the eye of a sleeping patient and the red button is pushed, a sustained electrical energy is emitted between the two terminals. The orbital muscles will show a sustained contraction if unparalyzed, and will not contract at all if fully paralyzed. If partially paralyzed, the muscles will contract and then the contraction will fade away in seconds. With experience, one can estimate to what degree the patient is paralyzed. The qualitative neuromuscular monitor does not give you the exact data, i.e. a decimal number between 0.0 (totally paralyzed and 1.0 (no paralysis) that a QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitor does. 

I still carry a MiniStim, and have used one for the entire 38 years I’ve practiced anesthesia, and for the 30,000 patients I’ve anesthetized. I would not start a case without a neuromuscular qualitative monitor. I would not want to be a patient receiving a neuromuscular paralytic drug if the anesthesiologist did not utilize a neuromuscular monitoring device similar to the MiniStim. The MiniStim is no longer manufactured, but other similar qualitative neuromuscular monitors are easily purchased, e.g. as depicted below, for $251, with no additional disposable costs.

SunStim qualitative neuromuscular monitor

Why is the topic of reversing neuromuscular blockade seeing this kind of scrutiny in 2022? Residual neuromuscular paralysis is less a problem now than at any time since the paralyzing medications were discovered. Why? Because in 2015 the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new intravenous drug sugammadex, a reliable, specific, and safe agent for the reversal of neuromuscular paralysis. Sugammadex can eliminate neuromuscular paralysis rapidly. A rocuronium molecule, bound within sugammadex’s lipophilic core, is rendered unavailable to bind to the acetylcholine receptor at the neuromuscular junction, and paralysis is reversed in seconds. 

Prior to 2015, the only reversal agent for pharmaceutical paralysis with a non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocker such as rocuronium was the drug neostigmine. Neostigmine can cause the side effect of severe bradycardia (slowing of the heart rate), and had to be administered intravenously in combination with glycopyrrolate (Robinul) or atropine. If a surgery was concluding and the patient had residual neuromuscular paralysis, the anesthesia provider needed to administer the combination of neostigmine/Robinul well before the wakeup-time, because the peak effect of neostigmine occurs at 10 minutes after administration.  If the patient was markedly paralyzed, e.g. the qualitative neuromuscular monitor showed no significant twitch or tetanus activity, neostigmine could not adequately reverse the neuromuscular paralysis in a short time. Sometimes it took 20-30 minutes before a deep neuromuscular paralysis could be reversed with neostigmine. If an anesthesia provider erroneously chose to awaken a patient prior to the time their neuromuscular paralysis was reversed or worn off, the patient would be too weak to breathe normally. A medical complication of hypoventilation or of awake paralysis could occur. 

Because of sugammadex, the risk of untreated residual neuromuscular paralysis has never been lower. Unreversed neuromuscular paralysis at wake-up should be a never-event now that sugammadex exists. There is virtually no circumstance in which an attending anesthesia provider should have unreversed neuromuscular paralysis at the present time. Why, in 2022, should we advocate for a QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitor which is bulky, expensive, and can only be strapped onto the thumb? The thumb location is a disadvantage, because many anesthetics, for example laparoscopies, require the arms to be tucked at a patient’s sides during surgery, and a thumb monitor is not practical. The qualitative neuromuscular monitors work on any peripheral nerve: e.g. the ulnar nerve at the wrist, the facial nerve lateral to the eye, or the posterior tibial nerve in the ankle, and provide a more versatile monitor than the QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular thumb monitor.

Qualitative neuromuscular monitoring is useful, easy, versatile, and inexpensive. QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring has the appeal of a score—a number between 0 and 1.0—that can be added to the already burdensome printout of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), and may seem satisfying to those addicted to the dubious wonders of the EMR, or to those who want to see QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitors reported in the medical literature. But the addition of QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring to the required ASA list of monitors at this time is premature.

Where is the science? Where is the prospective, randomized trial of QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring versus qualitative neuromuscular monitoring in the age of sugammadex? Does anyone really believe that qualitative neuromuscular monitoring will be inaccurate and lead to significant anesthetic complications in an era when sugammadex is available? 

Qualitative neuromuscular monitoring was always a solid idea. I made this point twelve years ago when I wrote, “During residency or during the years afterward, a MiniStim and a stethoscope are arguably the only tools of your own you need to carry into an operating room to conduct a 21st-century general anesthetic.”

Until prospective scientific evidence demonstrates that QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring improves outcomes, mandating the extra technology of QUANTITATIVE neuromuscular monitoring as a required standard is not the correct path for the ASA to take in 2022 or at any time in the future. 

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM

WHEN INTERNS AND RESIDENTS UNIONIZE

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 13 Comments
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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On May 2, 2022, residents and fellows (medical doctors in their first years of educational work after medical school) at Stanford University Health Care voted to unionize. In an email to medical staff, the Graduate Medical Education administration wrote: “Stanford Health Care (SHC) residents and fellows voted in favor of having The Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), a local of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), serve as their collective bargaining representative. The votes cast in the election represent the sentiment of 1,049 residents and fellows who participated, out of the 1,478 employed by SHC. Ultimately, 835 voted ‘yes’ to unionization; 214 voted ‘no.’ . . . While we believe that the best relationship with our employees is a direct one without a union, we respect the results. . . . When the results are certified in the coming days, the first stages of the collective bargaining process will begin. . . . We will negotiate with the union in good faith to reach an agreement that reflects your priorities, while maintaining the best parts about training at Stanford.”

Stanford residents and fellows are not alone in choosing to unionize. A total of 1450 residents and fellows at UCSF (University of California San Francisco) recently voted to join the same Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR) union. The UCSF residents stated, “By joining CIR, UCSF residents will be able to negotiate their contracts for the first time, including bargaining for better salaries, benefits, time off, and other provisions that will improve resident life and well-being.” 

A total of over 20,000 residents and fellows at hospitals around the U.S. have voted to join this CIR union. What will this development mean to healthcare in the United States? I respect residents and fellows at the highest level. I spent five years as a medical resident, and I can empathize with the demands of their workload. From my current perspective as an attending physician at an academic medical center, how will this unionizing of housestaff (MDs who are residents and fellows) play out? 

First off, why form a union? The main reasons are a lack of bargaining power regarding:

  1. Burnout and staffing. Housestaff work up to 80 hours per week, a number that is twice the 40-hour workweek considered standard in the United States, and they do this for a duration of 3 to 7 years, depending on their specialty.  The rate of burnout is known to be high in medical doctors, and despite nods to wellness programs at most university hospitals, improvements have been slow in coming. An online survey of doctors finds an overall physician burnout rate of 42%, and the highest percentage of burnout occurred in these six specialties: urology: 54%, neurology: 50%, nephrology: 49%, diabetes and endocrinology: 46%, family medicine: 46%, and radiology: 46%.
  2. COVID. The long hours and risks of acquiring COVID while working with sick COVID patients from 2020 -2022 made many residents and fellows feel vulnerable and angry. While hospital administrators and many faculty returned to the safe havens of their homes each night, interns and residents staffed intensive care units, wards, and emergency rooms, caring for patients with this terrifying new contagious disease. When University of Massachusetts interns and residents joined the CIR union, they stated, “When the pandemic struck, securing better conditions became even more urgent, as the inequities in our healthcare system were laid bare — and in light of the rapid changes that left residents scrambling to keep up within traumatizing and sometimes dangerous practice conditions.”
  3. Higher pay. Residents and fellows are paid a salary. They do not earn an hourly wage. When their salary is divided by 80 hours of work per week, 50 weeks per year, most residents and fellows are making less than minimum wage. When University of Massachusetts interns and residents joined the CIR union, they stated, “UMass Memorial residents are willing to work 80 hours per week because we know exceptional care is critical to community well-being, but we are significantly underpaid for doing so.” 
  4. Better benefits. Residents and fellows will desire more vacation time, top-notch health insurance benefits, and perhaps even retirement contributions.

If residents and fellows don’t receive what they seek during negotiations with the administration, what consequence can residents and fellows turn to? Will they go on strike? In May 2019, interns and residents at UCSF staged a 15-minute “Unity Break” strike as a show of solidarity and power. The Committee of Interns and Residents, which represented 1,100 of UCSF’s resident and fellow population at that time, said that management had not properly recognized the contributions of their resident and intern members and offered a package that left them underpaid and underrepresented. “UCSF has failed to meet some of the very basic demands that we have been fighting for at the table,” said Kim Carter, director of the union. 

Can doctors strike? Is it ethically OK for doctors to strike? I think the answer is no. To leave patients without healthcare while doctors strike for better hours, wages, and benefits is a violation of the ethics of our healing profession. I don’t believe young doctors should be abused or squeezed into unacceptable hours, low wages, and/or poor benefits, but doctors staging a labor walkout would be a mistake. And if a union will never strike, will it ever have any real negotiating power? The CRONA (Committee for the Recognition of Nursing Achievement) nursing union at Stanford staged a strike beginning April 25, 2022, just days ago. Negotiations were successful after only one week of the strike, with the nurses gaining a tentative agreement for significant base wage increases of 5% on April 1, 2022, 2% on December 1, 2022, 5% on April 1 2023, and 5% on April 2024, in addition to other improvements in benefits, staffing, and scheduling. 

I have firsthand experience with strikes. I was a laborer during three United Steelworkers of America strikes in Northern Minnesota during summer employment in taconite mines while I was in college and medical school. Blue-collar strikes are not pretty. The picket lines were brutal, and no one dared cross them. Both sides lost money as the strikes wore on, and interpersonal conflicts simmered for a long time afterward. 

The idea of residents and fellows joining a union is not a new one. In 2001 The Los Angeles Times reported a story on this topic. The article stated, “Striking will disrupt the educational progression of classes, clinical practice and testing. A student wants to come in and have some certainty that his or her three-year residency will take three years. How would they feel if suddenly they were told they wouldn’t finish on time and, whether a strike is a good idea or a bad one, that they’re not going to be able to take a board exam?” One of the doctors who joined the union at that time stated, “Change won’t come overnight, but I think it will happen. We have to stop that cowboy attitude: ‘It’s always been this way, we’re tough, we don’t complain.’ Many residents want to complain, but they’re in an environment where if they do, they’re punished. Residents have to fight for all these things and, without a union, they don’t have any legs to stand on.”  

The ”cowboy attitude” refers an old-school medical education argument that sounds like this: “There’s no other way to educate doctors. It takes at least 80-100 hours per week. Even if you stay in-house every other night you miss half the good cases. When I was a resident, back in the (fill in the blank . . . 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s), we slept in the hospital every other night and worked 120 hours per week. Now residents are complaining that 80 hours per week is too much.”

When I was an internal medicine resident in the 1980s, we stayed in the hospital on-call every third night and worked approximately 100 hours per week. My salary during my first year of residency was $16,000. On an hourly basis, this equated to $3.33 per hour. Adjusted for inflation, my 1980 salary would be $55,826, or $11.63 per hour, less than the current minimum wage. 

If medical centers shorten the workweek of interns and residents to 40 hours per week from the current limit of 80 hours per week, the medical center may need to hire twice as many interns and residents or other physician surrogates to do the workload. And if the union negotiates a 10-20% increase in annual salary, the cost for interns and resident would increase further. Where will all this money come from? Most of the salaries of residents and fellows are paid for by billions of dollars of federal tax money, as medical education is subsidized by the United States government. The publication Congressional Research Sources states, “Federal support for medical residency training (a.k.a., graduate medical education [GME]) is the largest source of federal support for the health care workforce. Although the health workforce includes a number of professions, the size of the federal investment in GME—estimated at $16 billion in 2015—makes it a policy lever often considered to alter the health care workforce and impact health care access.” 

Labor unions in the United States are organizations that represent workers in many industries. Labor unions grew afterCongress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 to protect the rights of both employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to eliminate certain private sector labor and management practices which could harm the welfare of workers, businesses and the economy.

The Ailing Labor Rights of Medical Residents, by Sarah Geiger, published in 2006, describes the legal history of medical resident labor law and the attempts to legalize unionization among medical residents. I quote the following excerpts directly from Geiger’s paper: 

“From 1947 to 1974, hospital staff members did not have the right to unionize. . . . Congress then amended the NLRA in 1974 to include non-profit hospitals. The Committee on Labor and Public Welfare report on the amendments stated that it could find no acceptable reason why 1,427,012 employees of these non-profit, non-public hospitals, representing 56% of all hospital employees, should continue to be excluded from the coverage and protections of the Act. . . . One source of confusion involved the dubious supervisory status of professional health care providers. . . . health care professionals exercised supervisory roles and were thus excluded from the right to unionize. . . .

“In Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the NLRB held that the residents, interns, and clinical fellows of Cedars-Sinai were not ‘employees’ within the meaning of the NLRA. Thus, they had no right to unionize. . . . The Board thus concluded that interns, residents, and clinical fellows were primarily students, noting the relationship between residents and Cedars-Sinai was primarily educational, and not an employment relationship. . . .  The decision remarked that interns ‘participate in these programs not for the purpose of earning a living; instead they are there to pursue the graduate medical education that is a requirement for the practice of medicine. This statement implies that residents do not actually ‘practice medicine,’ but merely are training to do so. . . . 

“In response to staunch legal criticism, the Board reversed Cedars- Sinai.  Boston Medical, an oft-quoted case, involved a unit of housestaff at the Boston Medical Center (BMC) that attempted to unionize. . . .  The Board overruled its precedent in Cedars-Sinai and held that medical interns and residents were both students and employees and thus were entitled to unionize. . . . The NLRB recognition of housestaff’s plight has done little to encourage unionization among medical interns and residents. . . . The residents’ dual roles, however, present extra-legal barriers to unionization which are not present in other industries. Residents spend an inordinate number of hours in the hospital and often are directly serving patients for twenty-four hours at a time. . . .  the fears of Congress (and earlier fears of the American Medical Association) that unionization may compromise the doctor-patient relationship or the quality of health care residents adds another layer of complication. . . .   

“The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the representative body of all accredited medical schools in the United States and Canada, as well as over 400 teaching hospitals, vehemently opposed all resident unionization efforts. . . . Offering more labor rights to medical residents would cost academic hospitals inordinate amounts of money. The cost of replacing one surgical resident with a “physician extender,” or other physician, is $210,000 to $315,000 a year. . . . the federal government is by no means an objective observer in the matter of medical residency funding and regulations. Currently, the federal government is the main financier of graduate medical education, ‘contributing $6.8 billion through Medicare, plus additional sums through the Departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs.’ The federal government is constantly looking to reduce the cost of medical care. Offering residents more control over their working conditions would likely lead them to demand more money, money that would have to come from the federal government or from private university hospitals. Thus, the government and academic hospitals are appropriate bedfellows in opposing resident labor rights. 

“The Boston Medical decision made it clear that little legal basis exists to deny medical residents unionization rights or any NLRA specified rights for that matter. Thus, unless Congress amends the NLRA, no legal barriers exist to housestaff unionization.  Many other internal barriers, however, hinder medical residents from acquiring labor rights. Unionization takes more effort than residents have time for and many fear unions will compromise their goals as physicians. A national survey of residents found that residents’ willingness to get involved in forming a union or serving as a member of union management was inversely proportional to the difficulty and amount of time their specialty required them to be in the hospital. Residents are accountable to their superiors for their future careers and would rather endure a few years of grueling working conditions than do anything which might compromise their careers. . . . Hospitals should give residents a real opportunity to unionize. . . . An informed, inclusive dialogue will serve to clarify legal and extra-legal barriers to accomplishing these congressional goals as well as to alleviate medical residents’ labor burdens.”

As described above, a crucial issue which complicates union negotiations for medical residents and fellows is that their jobs are part work and part education. Each intern or resident is a medical worker, a student of the specialty he or she is training in, and a teacher to the interns and residents who are junior to them in the hierarchy. Residents and fellows are learning as they are paid to work. Their learning is both valuable and necessary for progression to their eventual career. The U.S. News and World Report’s listing of the “Best Paying Jobs in America” lists specialties of Medical Doctors as 7 of the 10 highest paying jobs in the United States. 

No discussion of intern and resident salaries would be complete without a disclosure of the average debt these young doctors carry. Because of the high costs of medical school and college tuition, the average medical school graduate owes $241,600 in education debt. The average medical school graduate owes six times as much as the average college graduate. You can’t blame student doctors for wanting to maximize their income as medical interns, residents, and fellows.

If there’s a silver lining in all this, it’s best described in this anecdote from my training years: After completing a 3-year residency in internal medicine, I applied for and was accepted to a second 2-year residency in anesthesiology, a field I was passionate to learn about. In the first weeks of my anesthesia residency, a former chairman of the Stanford anesthesiology department gave us a lecture and tutorial on how to intubate the trachea of a patient with the highest level of skill and ease. I hung on every word he said. I was getting a lesson from a legend, and I was collecting a salary while I was learning this craft. Image a young golf professional getting paid while he received a lesson from Jack Nicklaus. I was earning a salary while I bettered my education and became more marketable in the medical marketplace. Could I have been paid more as a resident? Perhaps. But the primary gain I made during five residency years was the investment of my time in the labor and learning which made it possible for me to work as a board-certified anesthesiologist for the past 36 years . . . and still counting.

I’m confident Stanford Healthcare and the CIF union will negotiate a successful compromise agreeable to both sides. Until that time, stay tuned, as the intersection of physician labor unions and academic medical centers will generate headlines in the days ahead.

I offer this question to my readers: Do you think it’s acceptable for unionized doctors to strike?

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

THE RESCUE: UNDERWATER ANESTHETICS EXPLAINED

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 2 Comments
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Underwater general anesthetics of 3 hours duration? See it in The Rescue, a new National Geographic Documentary Film directed by Jimmy Chin (winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Free Solo). The Rescue details the miraculous extraction of 12 boys and their coach from a flooded Thailand cave in June and July of 2018. The Rescue required 13 underwater general anesthetics delivered by an anesthesiologist and maintained by non-medical cave divers during their 3-hour swim to the mouth of the cave. How did this once-in-history anesthetic tour de force come about? You can watch the movie—a favorite for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary—on Disney+ for their $7.99 monthly fee. This column explains the specifics as to how anesthesiology innovation saved thirteen lives in The Rescue.

The site of The Rescue was the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand. Twelve boys of ages 11 – 16 from the Wild Boar soccer team and their coach entered the cave for a birthday celebration. June monsoon rains hit and flooded the entrance of the cave, trapping all thirteen inside. 

The boys were trapped at the left of this diagram. The entrance to the cave is at the right.

The synopsis of The Rescue follows this timeline:

Day 1 – Trials of gas-powered generators to pump the water out of the cave fail to lower the water level.

Day 2 – The Thai Navy Seals arrive on site. They attempt scuba diving into the cave but abort their efforts because of low visibility and difficult access. They were only able to advance 200 meters into the cave. None had experience diving into dark narrow caves. John Volanthen, an information technology consultant who does cave diving as a hobby, shows them a map of the long tortuous cave route, and surmises that the boys are trapped about 2 kilometers into the cave. Richard Stanton, a retired middle-aged British firefighter who is also an expert in cave diving, is alerted to the predicament, and flies to Thailand to help. 

Day 5 – Stanton assembles a collection of his friends who are fellow cave divers. These men have real world jobs such as electricians, contractors, mechanics, and consultants, but are experienced in underwater cave exploration. At first, the Thai Navy Seals will not allow the cave divers to attempt a rescue because they deem it is too dangerous. Eventually the Thai Seals consent to let the cave divers proceed. Stanton describes their passage as scuba diving against a raging river of white water, with the added problem of poor visibility. They surface at the first air-filled chamber inside the cave, and instead of finding the boys they find four pump workers who were unknowingly trapped inside the cave. The cave divers swim the pump workers out, sharing their scuba regulators as they swim, but find the pump workers are easily panicked in the dark cold underwater conditions, and the passage out is very difficult. Their entire swim rescue of these men takes only 30 to 40 seconds, yet Stanton describes the ordeal as “an underwater wrestling match.” 

Day 7 –Rain continues and the water levels rise. Hundreds of people surround the mouth of the cave, and worldwide media coverage is ongoing.

Day 10 – The cave divers continue their attempts to explore the length of the cave. They extend a rope behind them to trace their route back to the outside world. After several hours of traversing the narrow route, including passing through several air chambers above water, they reach a chamber where the atmosphere smells pungent. They fear they have located the rotting flesh of decomposing bodies. Instead they shine a light into the chamber and see 13 people—the Thai boys and their coach—sitting on the rocky floor. They are skinny and frightened, but alive. They’ve had no food for 10 days and have existed by drinking the water from the cave. The cave divers return to the mouth of the cave and announce that the boys are alive. 

Day 12 – The divers follow the rope back to the boys and bring them power gel food and foil blankets. Their plan going forward is unclear. There appears to be no way to swim the boys out for the 3-hour underwater journey to the mouth of the cave. One option is to wait until October (four months) until the monsoon season is over, and the cave is no longer flooded. A second option is to somehow drill down to where the boys are trapped. A third option is to pump out millions of gallons of water out of the cave, but this is also deemed impossible. Another cave diver friend of Stanton’s is Dr. Richard Harris, who lives and works in Australia. Dr. Harris is an anesthesiologist. The team of cave divers telephone him and ask if the boys can be anesthetized for 3 hours to be extracted underwater. His initial answer is no, that this would be impossible.

At the same time, the divers bring an oxygen analyzer into the cave and discover that there is only 15% oxygen left in the atmosphere where the boys are trapped. Normal room air contains 21% oxygen, and 15% oxygen is considered an eminent threat to life for the boys. Immediate action is necessary.

Day 14 – Dr. Harris arrives at the cave. He and his cave diver colleagues come up with a plan to anesthetize and extract the boys, but there is a new problem: The Thai government does not want them to attempt the rescue. The government fears the boys will all die in the futile attempt. Enter Josh Morris,   a cave diver who speaks Thai. He explains the facts and the threat of the low oxygen atmosphere to the government authorities, and convinces them there is no time to waste and that there is no other workable plan. The government agrees to let the cave divers proceed.

Day 15 – The rescue plan is as follows: Divers will swim into the cave to the chamber where the boys are located. The divers will transport an extra oxygen cylinder, a full-face dive mask and regulator, and a dive suit for each boy. They will also carry three medications: 1) Xanax, an oral anti-anxiety pill in the Valium family of benzodiazepines; 2) ketamine, an injectable general anesthetic drug, carried in a syringe-and-needle setup; and 3) atropine, an injectable drug which dries up oral secretions (necessary because ketamine can cause excessive salivation significant enough to choke off breathing). When the cave divers arrive at the chamber where the boys are situated, they dress the first boy in a dive suit complete with a rubber head-covering. Dr. Harris then administers the Xanax pill and the intramuscular injections of ketamine and atropine. After the boy loses consciousness, they tie the boy’s hands behind the boy’s back and apply the full-face oxygen dive mask to keep the water out. The boy is placed in the water atop a full oxygen cylinder, and a diver guides the boy and the cylinder under the water. This diver clings to the rope as he begins the 3-hour journey back toward the cave entrance. There are multiple air chambers on the route back to the entrance. At each air chamber, the diver surfaces and assesses if the boy is still alive and breathing, and whether the boy is anesthetized deeply enough. If the boy is twitching, the diver injects more ketamine. Keep in mind this diver is not a doctor—he has been taught by Dr. Harris to inject more drug if the boy seems to need more sedation. This process is repeated for four boys the first day and is successful. All four reach the surface, alive and anesthetized, and are transported to a nearby hospital.

Day 17 – The process is repeated and four more boys are successfully extracted.

Day 18 – A heavy monsoon rainstorm is expected, so all five remaining individuals are extracted before the cave is totally flooded. The cave divers are hailed as civilian heroes as the last of the boys is rescued. The rescue effort involved more than 10,000 people, including divers, rescue workers, 900 police officers, 2,000 soldiers representatives from 100 governmental agencies, 10 police helicopters, more than 700 diving cylinders, and the pumping of more than a billion liters of water from the caves. 

In the aftermath, Richard Stanton returns to England and receives a George Medal, the second highest award for civilian gallantry, in a regal ceremony at Buckingham Palace. 

The Rescue is riveting and suspenseful, and ultimately worth the one hour 45 minutes and the $7.99 you’ll invest in it.

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Here’s the Anesthesia Consultant analysis of the medical circumstances in The Rescue:

  • In an operating room, anesthesia is typically delivered as a gas (e.g. sevoflurane), or intravenously. Neither gas anesthesia nor intravenous anesthesia is possible in an underwater cave rescue. Ketamine is the only general anesthetic drug which can be injected. Ketamine can be injected either into an IV (e.g. in an operating room by an anesthesiologist) or into a muscle (e.g. in a cave in Thailand). Ketamine has the advantages of quick onset and a lack of respiratory depression—that is, ketamine will not stop a patient’s breathing. But if a patient becomes over-sedated it’s possible they will have upper airway obstruction which can lead to inadequate ventilation, so ketamine administration typically needs to be administered by an anesthesia professional who monitors the patient’s breathing—unless you’re rescuing kids in a cave. Ketamine also has theses disadvantages: It results in a relatively slow wake up (compared to propofol and/or sevoflurane gas); it causes markedly increased saliva production (which is why we need to administer atropine, a secretion-blocking anticholinergic drug—along with ketamine); and ketamine can cause vivid bad dreams—for this reason we routinely give an IV benzodiazepine such as Versed along with ketamine. Re-dosing of ketamine was required because the drug’s half-life (the time it takes for the total amount of ketamine in the body to be reduced by 50%) is about 2.5 hours in adults. Dr. Harris couldn’t be with every boy en route, which is why he had to train the other cave divers how to inject ketamine for redosing.
  • Dr. Harris could have chosen to use an injection of intramuscular Versed instead of Xanax (the oral benzodiazepine used in The Rescue). A disadvantage with oral Xanax is its slow onset time. It’s unlikely the Xanax began to work until it was absorbed from the stomach and carried by the bloodstream to the brain, which likely took thirty minutes or more.
  • The choice of full-face dive masks (FFMs), capable of maintaining constant positive airway pressure (CPAP) during the anesthetics, was brilliant. All acute medical care, be it in an operating room, an intensive care unit, an emergency room, a battlefield, or a cave, follows the priority order of A-B-C, or Airway- Breathing-Circulation. The problems of keeping the airway open, as well as keeping oxygenation and ventilation intact, were daunting challenges underwater. There were no research articles and no textbooks to tell the cave divers how to deal with this situation. They used their best strategy and made their best guess, and it was successful. If excessive water had leaked into the mask, a boy could drown. 
full face dive mask

  • Fortunately all the boys and their coach were slender (per the video footage) and had low body-mass-indexes (BMIs). A patient with a low BMI typically has an easy airway, and would have a lower chance of obstructing their upper airway during a 3-hour underwater general anesthetic. An overweight patient would probably not have survived a 3-hour underwater general anesthetic. As well, all the boys and their coach were young and healthy with normal hearts and lungs. If they had been older, with any abnormal cardiac or respiratory function, they may not have survived the 3-hour underwater general anesthetic.
The Thai boys in the cave

  • It’s striking that the boys could survive for two weeks with only water and no food. Hydration is critical—no one can survive two weeks without water—but food was not imperative for this length of time. They survived without calories for two weeks, but humans can only survive for about three days without water.
  • Hypothermia, or low body temperature, was a risk during the underwater rescue. Anesthetized patients have no muscle movement and are unable to generate any body heat in the cold water. The scuba suits and hoods were aimed at minimizing the temperature drop while the boys were anesthetized.
  • No one monitored the vital signs of the boys during their 3-hour underwater general anesthetics. General anesthetics always require monitoring of these parameters: heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, ECG, respiratory rate, temperature, and end-tidal carbon dioxide expiration. In an underwater cave anesthetic, none of this was possible. Luckily the ketamine anesthesia as administered must have kept all the vital signs within acceptable limits.
  • The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere of the cave was only 15%, far lower than the normal room air concentration of 21% we’re all breathing right now. This oxygen concentration of 15% is roughly equivalent to the oxygen concentration atop a mountain at 10,000 feet of altitude. The boys tolerated the gradual decrease of the oxygen level within the cave from 21% to 15% over 12 days without any brain damage or any damage to a vital organ system. An acute decrease from 21% to 15% may have caused low blood oxygen—hypoxia—and organ damage. During anesthetics in an operating room, anesthesiologists commonly administer at least 40-50% oxygen—a higher concentration than in room air—as an extra margin of safety.

The film The Rescue documents a remarkable feat of emergency medicine and emergency anesthesia care. I recommend you see the movie, and I hope you’ll understand the medical care better because of the discussion presented above. 

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
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PRESIDENT BIDEN’S COLONOSCOPY ANESTHESIA

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Three days ago, I was giving anesthesia for six consecutive colonoscopy patients. Following my first case, I checked my phone and discovered that the President of the United States Joe Biden was having a colonoscopy at Walter Reed Medical Center that very morning. The headlines stated that for the first time, temporary acting presidential power was being turned over to a woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, during the time of President Biden’s colonoscopy anesthesia.

I mentioned this to the gastroenterologist I was working with that day, and he asked, “How long do you think he will be unable to make decisions as the President? We tell our patients not to drive the rest of the day, and not to make any important life decisions after their general anesthetic. Biden has the most difficult and most important job on Earth. When can he return to duty?”

I answered, “My guess is that he’ll have the same propofol anesthetic we’re administering today. The procedure will last thirty minutes, he’ll begin to awaken five minutes after the propofol is discontinued, and within an hour he’ll feel clear-headed.” The gastroenterologist was dubious that the leader of the free world would be alert enough to resume power only one hour after receiving propofol. Joseph Biden was one day short of his 79th birthday when the colonoscopy took place. Later that morning the news services reported that the President had transferred presidential powers to Kamala Harris at 10:10 a.m. EST and resumed his presidential powers at 11:35 a.m., a mere 1 hour and 25 minutes later. 

The evening after the colonoscopy, comedian Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live joked about Biden’s colonoscopy.  During Weekend Update, Jost reported on Biden’s resumption of all his presidential responsibilities immediately following the colonoscopy, and noted that Biden had just turned 79. “Half the country already thinks he’s senile,” Jost said. “You can’t drop all that on him the second he comes out of the gas.”

A note from an anesthesiologist to the comedy writers: No one uses “gas” for anesthesia for a colonoscopy. The anesthetic is solely from intravenous (IV) drug(s).

I have no specific knowledge of what anesthetic drug regimen the President received for his colonoscopy, but more likely than not he received propofol. Anesthesia for colonoscopy is typically administered so that patients have no awareness during this procedure, a procedure which does not involve surgical pain, but rather involves the uncomfortable entrance of a 66-inch-long flexible hose, one-half-inch in diameter, into their anus, rectum, and colon. 

For the quickest recovery after colonoscopy, one option is no anesthesia at all. Very few patients sign up for a colonoscopy without any intravenous anesthesia. The press reports about Biden’s colonoscopy stated that he had anesthesia, so let’s discount the option that he had the procedure while awake. 

Colonoscopy sedation is typically done with one of two recipes: 1) conscious sedation with a combination of intravenous Versed (generic name midazolam, a benzodiazepine in the Valium family) plus intravenous fentanyl, such that the patient has no memory of the procedure; or 2) intravenous general anesthesia with propofol by continuous infusion or by intermittent boluses so that the patient is unresponsive. The combination of Versed and fentanyl leads to a slower wakeup and recovery than with propofol. The duration of effect of Versed is approximately 30 to 45 minutes after a single dose, with a recovery time of 2 to 6 hours. The duration of effect of IV fentanyl begins within minutes and lasts for 30 to 60 minutes after a single dose. 

Propofol for colonoscopy leads to a quicker wakeup, a quicker discharge home, and less hangover. Virtually every surgical general anesthetic in the United States includes propofol, and anesthesiologists are experts at the administration and pharmaceutical properties of the drug. Propofol is an intravenous nonbarbiturate anesthetic which induces anesthesia quickly and provides a rapid emergence from anesthesia. The onset of action is within 20 – 40 seconds. The anesthesia provider for a colonoscopy will continue administering IV propofol until the procedure is over. A typical colonoscopy will last 20 – 40 minutes, depending on whether the gastroenterologist needs to take extra time to remove any colonic polyps. In Biden’s case, a single 3 mm benign-appearing polyp was identified and removed.

Propofol’s pharmacokinetics are described by two phases:

In the first phase (red curve), the plasma concentration decreases rapidly because the drug redistributes, or spreads, out of the bloodstream into other tissues of the body. The half–life of this fast redistribution is only 2 – 8 minutes, meaning the concentration of propofol in the bloodstream is halved every 2 to 8 minutes. This first phase explains the quick transition to wakefulness up after the drug is stopped. The second phase (black curve) is the elimination of propofol from the body. The half-life time of this elimination from the body is 4 – 7 hours (reference: MILLER’S ANESTHESIA, 9thedition, chapter 23 on Intravenous Anesthetics).

The graph below depicts the timeline after propofol is discontinued. After a one-hour infusion, the concentration of propofol in the blood drops to near zero within 30-40 minutes.

THE PROPOFOL CONCENTRATION APPROACHES ZERO 40 MINUTES AFTER THE END OF INFUSION

The website PDR.net affirms this, stating that “Recovery from anesthesia is rapid (8 to 19 minutes for 2 hours of anesthesia) and is associated with minimal psychomotor impairment.” The PDR also states that “The elimination half-life of 3 to 12 hours is the result of slow release of propofol from fat stores. About 70% of a single dose is excreted renally (by the kidneys) in 24 hours.”

While the President would be awake one hour after receiving 30 minutes of propofol, and the blood concentration would be minimal, it still takes 24 hours for 70% of a single dose of propofol to be excreted by the kidneys. Therefore, one hour after the propofol was discontinued, even though the blood concentration was minimal, a significant amount of the drug would still be in the President’s body.

I’ve had propofol anesthesia for a colonoscopy, and I can attest that I woke up promptly and was in an automobile heading home within 45 minutes after the end of the procedure. I felt alert, albeit a bit woozy, after 60 minutes of recovery time. Did I feel it would have been safe for me to resume my duties administering general anesthetics to patients at that time? No. Would a major American airline allow one of its pilots to fly passengers at that time? No. Would the U.S. Army allow a general to command thousands of soldiers at that time? I doubt it.

One hour after a propofol colonoscopy anesthetic, the President would be awake enough to converse and give a “thumbs up.” Would he be alert enough at that point to make decisions regarding the nuclear football, a potential attack on Taiwan by mainland China, or a terrorist attack on a major United States city? Was this nearly 79-year-old man safe to make all the acute decisions the United States President could have to make, only one hour after discontinuing propofol? 

The Mayo Clinic website states that, “After the exam (colonoscopy), it takes about an hour to begin to recover from the sedative. You’ll need someone to take you home because it can take up to a day for the full effects of the sedative to wear off. Don’t drive or make important decisions or go back to work for the rest of the day.” 

Was Biden fit to run the country 55 minutes after his colonoscopy anesthetic? 

Hmmm. The decision as to whether he was recovered enough to resume running the country . . . was a decision made by President Biden’s doctors on that day.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
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READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

SMART GLASSES IN THE OPERATING ROOM

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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binocular Moverio BT-35E smart glasses

A South Korean group led by Dr. Y.E. Jang published a study in this month’s issue of Anesthesiology describing the use of a head-mounted smart glasses display during radial arterial line placement in patients younger than 2 years. Placing a catheter into the tiny radial artery in a child’s wrist is one of the most difficult procedures in our specialty. The average internal diameter of the radial artery is 1.2 ± 0.3 millimeter in children aged less than 2 years. Wearing smart glasses improved the anesthesiologist’s first-attempt success rate, and reduced the procedure time and complication rates. This was an important study, and important information.

In the control group of this study, each anesthesiologist would use a traditional ultrasound screen to visualize the artery. 

The anesthesiologist must look up to see the ultrasound machine, while he is working on the patient’s wrist.

In the smart glasses group, the ultrasound machine was located behind the operator, and the smart glasses were paired with the ultrasound machine. The smart glasses used were a binocular Moverio BT-35E unit,  connected to an ultrasound machine by a HDMI cable. The smart glasses displayed a simultaneous replica of the ultrasound screen image in front of the anesthesiologist’s eyes, so the operator could easily see both the procedure field (the radial artery at the wrist) and the ultrasound screen simultaneously without any head and eye movement. 

The anesthesiologist can see the ultrasound image while he is looking at the patient’s wrist

One hundred sixteen children were included in the study. The smart glasses group had a higher first-attempt success rate than the control group: 87.9% (51 of 58) vs. 72.4% (42 of 58) in the control group, with p = 0.036. The smart glasses group also had a shorter first-attempt procedure time (median 33 seconds) than the control group (median 43 seconds), with p = 0.007.

An accompanying editorial in the same issue of Anesthesiology stated, “This elegant prospective trial offers objective insight into the potential impact of head-mounted displays on the overall success and provider ergonomics in anesthetic care during technically complex procedures. Head-mounted displays and augmented reality devices have been evaluated in various settings, including placement of ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve blocks, for use in intraoperative patient monitoring and placement of central venous catheters.”

What will be the role of smart glasses in medicine? We all remember the original hype surrounding the 2013 release of Google Glass, a product which failed to capture a significant market of users. 

Google Glass

Problems with Google Glass included: “The unit overheated frequently with use and shut itself down, the battery life wasn’t long enough (less than an hour), the apps were great demos but limited in scope, and the user interface — tapping, swiping, blinking, head gestures, and the voice recognition after saying ‘Ok Glass’ — was not always smooth.” 

A 2014 study looked at using Google Glass to aid central venous catheter insertion in adults. This study failed to show any positive effects on success rate, procedure time, or number of attempts. These results most likely were due to the fact that larger central blood vessels in adults are easier to locate than the diminutive radial artery in the pediatric population.

Smart glasses are being studied in aviation. Both anesthesiologists and pilots have occupations where the slightest miscalculation or mistake can cost lives. Any step which enhances safety can be seen as a valuable change. A new product called AEROGLASS (Augmented reality aerial navigation for a safer and more effective aviation) attempts to put augmented reality in front of pilots’ eyes.

AEROGLASS in aviation

A recent review states, “The AEROGLASS turnkey smart glass solution provides general aviation pilots a true 3D, 360° view of navigation and safety features. One of the largest challenges for aviation professionals is accurately and safely navigating an aircraft. Current studies show that pilot error accounts for up to 70 % of all aviation accidents. Piloting an aircraft requires translating complex readings from the control panel displayed in 2D into a 3D environment and 360° reality. Accessing this information also requires pilots to take their eyes off the sky, thereby making them more prone to errors and increasing their stress levels. With a headset on, pilots will now be able to have digital 3D information appearing naturally in their field of vision, helping them make faster and better decisions. ‘Our product is an AR solution based on smart glasses. When pilots wear them, they will continue to see the scenery around them, but in addition to that, relevant safety and navigation information will be overlaid transparently within their field of view. . . . At first, the newly developed technology targets professional general aviation, but after some time AEROGLASS plans to utilize its technology in other transportation domains such as automotive and maritime or even for passengers.”

There are two potential uses for smart glasses in anesthesiology. The first is for performing invasive procedures which require ultrasound technology, such as the placement of peripheral nerve blocks or the placement of catheters into arteries and veins. This use makes sense, because it can make some procedures easier, as shown in the Jang study. But the placement of pediatric arterial lines, as in the Jang study, is a small marketplace (e.g. including pediatric open heart surgery, and pediatric surgery involving major blood loss). Ultrasound imaging for the placement of peripheral nerve blocks would be a bigger market, but to date there is no data supporting the use of smart glasses in the placement of peripheral nerve blocks.

Anesthesia vital signs monitor display

A second and more compelling use for smart glasses would be the display of a patient’s vital sign monitoring in real time on the smart glass screen, so that an anesthesiologist is in constant contact with the images of the vital sign electronic monitors. In 2021 a nurse anesthetist publication looked at the use of Google Glass by seven nurse anesthetists for display of the vital signs monitor, but there were no quantitative data to examine the significance of the technology. The physician medical literature has not studied the issue. 

Advantages of using smart glasses for real time patient vital signs monitoring would include:

  • The electrocardiogram, oximeter, and end-tidal CO2 waveforms would be displayed front and center in the anesthesiologist’s sight. The vital signs of heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, end-tidal gas values, and temperature would be constantly visualized no matter where the anesthesiologist was looking. 
  • This is a futuristic technology, and its use may connote that the hospital or surgery center is at the cutting edge of monitoring and safety equipment (despite the lack of any data to confirm this advantage at this time).

Disadvantages of using smart glasses for patient vital signs real time monitoring would include:

  • The cost of the head-mounted display (Moverio BT-35E, glasses in the current study) is approximately $800. This is not a large amount of money, but multiplied times every anesthetizing site, the expense rises.
  • The requirement for reliable and constant Bluetooth connection between the smart glasses and the electronic monitor.
  • The weight of the smart glasses (119 grams, or 0.43 pounds) is 4 – 8 times heavier than usual glasses (25 – 50 grams, or 0.05 – 0.1 pounds). Many individuals may object to wearing this product. 
  • If an anesthesiologist wears prescription glasses of his or her own, there would be two pairs of glasses needed.
  • The question of whether smart glasses are necessary in every routine anesthetic.

Let’s look at this last point. During most routine anesthetics the constant beep-beep-beep note and tone of the pulse oximeter gives the anesthesiologist real-time audible monitoring of both the heart rate and the ballpark oxygen saturation, without having to look at the display. The anesthesiologist still has to look up at the vital signs screen intermittently to note the blood pressure, end-tidal gas values, and temperature, but this intermittent look is part of the vigilance all anesthesiologists must do anyway. A left-to-right scanning gaze at the patient, the surgical field, the IV lines, any IV infusions, the airway tubing, the anesthesia machine, and the vital signs monitor screen is standard procedure in anesthesiology. If adopted, the use of smart glass technology for routine vital signs monitoring would indeed be a large market. Would the addition of smart glasses for routine monitoring be an overdose of technology in the operating room cockpit? Does excessive technology distract us from the actual patient?

Let me give you a historical perspective. As recently as the year 2000 there were zero computers in the anesthesia workstation. Our equipment included an anesthesia gas machine, a vital signs monitor, and carts which contained breathing tubes, airway equipment, syringes, needles, and drugs. Now we are encumbered by an electronic medical record (EMR) system screen + keyboard, and a narcotic-dispensing computerized drug cart in every hospital anesthetizing location. 

EPIC anesthesia electronic medical record (EMR) computer
Anesthesia drug cart
Anesthesia bar code reader/label printer computer

Add in some smart glasses with Bluetooth connection, and you’ve got an armada of gadgets to both aid the anesthesiologist and to distract him or her from the actual patient, who is three feet away and in need of vigilant care. Is anesthesia care any safer with all the computers: the EMR, and the narcotic-dispensing computerized drug cart? There is no data that these devices have made anesthesia any safer—it is only more complicated.

If smart glasses are ever to become a standard of care, I believe it would require data and proof that anesthesia complications were reduced and anesthesia outcomes were improved with such a device.

Technology in medicine tends to come between the patient and his or her doctor, a theme explored in my 2019 editorial, and in my novel Doctor Vita. View the future of medical technology with care. Think of that computer terminal between you and your doctor during a clinic visit. Now imagine a parallel situation with that computer terminal between you and your anesthesiologist, between you and your emergency room doctor, or between you and your ICU nurse. Will adding more electronic devices lead to safer care or more convoluted care? 

Put it another way: Do we need smart glasses, if we have smart anesthesiologists?

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

CARDIAC ARREST DURING A PEDIATRIC TONSILLECTOMY

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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A 12-year-old boy and his mother walk into a surgery center. The child is scheduled for a tonsillectomy, and is otherwise healthy. The anesthesiologist induces general anesthesia, and ten minutes later the patient has ventricular arrhythmias which descend into a cardiac arrest. Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) measures are applied, but the child cannot be resuscitated, and is declared dead. What caused this cardiac arrest during a pediatric tonsillectomy?

This is an actual closed malpractice case which I was asked to review. The anesthesiologist induced general anesthesia with propofol and a paralytic drug called succinylcholine (sux-in-ol-KOH-leen), and then inserted a breathing tube successfully into the patient’s windpipe. All vital signs were normal. Sevoflurane, nitrous oxide, and 50% oxygen were ventilated into the patient’s lungs. The surgeon began the tonsillectomy. One minute later the cardiac arrest occurred. The anesthesiologist followed ACLS guidelines, but standard ACLS treatments and hyperkalemia (elevated potassium concentration) treatments were unsuccessful.

Succinylcholine is an intravenous muscle relaxant (paralytic) drug commonly used in the United States. Succinylcholine is an old drug—available since 1951—which has the distinction of being the most rapid-acting intravenous muscle relaxant, and also the shortest-acting muscle relaxant. Succinylcholine is an important drug in an anesthesiologist’s toolkit. When an airway emergency threatens a patient’s life, such as the unexpected occurrence of laryngospasm, succinylcholine is the emergency drug of choice to paralyze the patient, relax the spasm of the vocal cords, and enable the anesthesiologist/emergency room physician/acute care physician to insert a life-saving breathing tube into the trachea.

But succinylcholine can be a dangerous drug. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed a Black Box Warning on succinylcholine in 1994. The current succinylcholine warning in the PDR (Prescribers’ Digital Reference) reads:

“Succinylcholine is contraindicated in patients with a personal or familial history of malignant hyperthermia and/or skeletal muscle myopathy. Malignant hyperthermia may be precipitated by succinylcholine; concomitant use of volatile anesthetics may further increase this risk. 

In neonates, infants, children, and adolescents, reserve the use of succinylcholine for emergency intubation or instances where immediate securing of the airway is necessary (e.g., laryngospasm, difficult airway, full stomach, or lack of intravenous access). 

There have been rare reports of ventricular dysrhythmias and fatal cardiac arrest secondary to rhabdomyolysis with hyperkalemia, primarily in healthy-appearing pediatric patients who were subsequently found to have undiagnosed skeletal muscle myopathy, most frequently Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. 

Affected pediatric patients are typically, but not exclusively, males 8 years or younger. Although some patients have no identifiable risk factors, a careful history and physical exam may identify developmental delays suggestive of myopathy, and a preoperative creatinine kinase could identify patients at risk. 

Closely monitor body temperature, expired CO2, heart rate, blood pressure, and electrocardiogram in pediatric patients to help detect early signs of malignant hyperthermia and/or hyperkalemia. 

The rhabdomyolysis syndrome often presents as peaked T-waves and sudden cardiac arrest within minutes of succinylcholine administration. If cardiac arrest occurs immediately after succinylcholine administration, institute treatment for hyperkalemia (e.g., intravenous calcium, bicarbonate, glucose with insulin, hyperventilation). If malignant hyperthermia is suspected, initiate appropriate treatment (e.g., dantrolene, supportive care) concurrently.”

Per the Black Box warning, succinylcholine has the potential for inducing life threatening hyperkalemia in children with undiagnosed skeletal muscular dystrophies. Severe hyperkalemia and ventricular arrhythmias followed by cardiac arrest may occur in apparently healthy children who have an occult muscular dystrophy (usually Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy). An occult muscular dystrophy is a rare inherited disease. The global prevalence of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy is 7.1 cases per 100,000 males, and 2.8 cases per 100,000 in the general population. The Black Box warning on succinylcholine recommends to “reserve use in children for emergency intubation or need to immediately secure the airway.”

The Black Box warning applies to neonates, infants, children and adolescents. No parent wants their son or daughter under the age of 18 to electively receive a drug which has an FDA Black Box Warning for use in adolescents. No parent wants their neonate, infant, child, or adolescent to have a risk of sudden cardiac arrest under general anesthesia for a common elective surgery.

In 1994 the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) published a sentinel article about the risks of succinylcholine in pediatric anesthesia. The article reviews the history of the succinylcholine warning: “In 1992, Drs. H. Rosenberg and G. Gronert published a letter in Anesthesiology briefly reviewing four deaths in male children under the age of eight who had received halothane and then succinylcholine. These cases were identified through the Malignant Hyperthermia (MH) Hotline. Reference was also made to ‘11 similar cases’ identified through the German MH Hotline. Their letter concluded with the statement: ‘We have notified the Food and Drug Administration of this potential problem and recommended that anesthesiologists carefully consider the indications for use of succinylcholine in young children.’ This letter was accepted for publication August 24,1992.” The article goes on to emphasize “the need for prompt and appropriate treatment should hyperkalemic arrest occur. This treatment involves the intravenous administration of calcium. With proper treatment, approximately 50% of patients have survived this catastrophic hyperkalemia.” The Black Box warning specifically states, “If cardiac arrest occurs immediately after succinylcholine administration, institute treatment for hyperkalemia (e.g., intravenous calcium, bicarbonate, glucose with insulin, hyperventilation).”

Despite the Black Box warning, how often is succinylcholine still used for non-emergency pediatric anesthetics in the United States? No one knows. I can attest that during a recent Quality Assurance review in the Northern California, I saw anesthetic records from a board-certified anesthesiologist who administered succinylcholine to a 14-year-old boy for elective ear surgery. I discussed this with the anesthesiologist, who was unaware they were doing anything dangerous.

There is an excellent alternative to the elective use of succinylcholine. For most cases, pediatric or adult, the muscle relaxant rocuronium is a superior alternative to succinylcholine. Succinylcholine is the IV muscle relaxant with the most rapid onset, but large doses (0.9 mg/kg) of rocuronium are nearly as rapid as succinylcholine, without any of succinylcholine’s risks.   Succinylcholine is also the IV muscle relaxant which wears off the fastest, but since the year 2015 FDA approval of the muscle relaxant reversal drug sugammadex (Bridion), an intubating dose of rocuronium can be rapidly reversed within 3 minutes by administering 16 mg/kg of sugammadex. 

Succinylcholine remains an important drug for the treatment of airway emergencies. I would never begin a general anesthetic if I did not have a vial of succinylcholine immediately available in case of an airway emergency. In addition, succinylcholine is important because it can be administered intramuscularly (in a patient who has no IV). For example, if a child is undergoing an inhalational induction of general anesthesia with sevoflurane vapor prior to a surgery, and the child suddenly goes into laryngospasm before any IV can be started, (this does occur, not uncommonly, and is a true emergency), the appropriate treatment is an intramuscular injection of 4 mg/kg of succinylcholine. The child will become paralyzed within minutes, and the anesthesiologist can then insert a life-saving breathing tube. (The mean onset of paralysis with 4 mg/kg intramuscular succinylcholine in children ages 1 to 10 ranges from 2.9 to 3.9 minutes.)

I’ve written about the advantages and risks of succinylcholine previously in the article, “Succinylcholine: Vital Drug or Obsolete Dinosaur?”  

I also refer you to the published article, “Is There Still a Role for Succinylcholine in Contemporary Clinical Practice?“

The take home messages from this case study of a cardiac arrest during a pediatric tonsillectomy are:

  • If you’re an anesthesia provider, do not administer succinylcholine to a neonate, infant, child, or adolescent for an elective surgery. The Black Box warning on succinylcholine recommends to “reserve use in children for emergency intubation or need to immediately secure the airway.”
  • If you’re a parent, prior to your son or daughter’s surgery, be empowered to ask your child’s anesthesiologist if they’re aware of the Black Box warning on succinylcholine. 
  • Nobody wants a death brought on by an elective anesthetic.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
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The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
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Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE OPERATING ROOM . . . (THE PREMISE OF DOCTOR VITA) . . . DISCUSSED IN THE JOURNAL ANESTHESIOLOGY

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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HAL from the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey

In 2004 I began writing Doctor Vita, a novel describing the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into medical care. Fifteen years later, in 2019, Doctor Vita was published. The story described Artificial Intelligence in medicine as a perceived panacea that descended into a chaotic dystopian reality.

In recent years, engineers have developed closed-loop AI machines that can administer appropriate doses of anesthetics without human input, as described in The Washington Post article, “We Are Convinced the Machine Can Do Better Than Human Anesthesiologists.”

This month’s issue of Anesthesiology, our specialty’s leading journal, contains two studies on further incremental Artificial Intelligence in Medicine advances in the operating room. Both studies reveal machines that control a patient’s blood pressure automatically during surgery, by the administration of fluids and/or vasopressors (Joosten, et al. and Maheswari et al. ) 

Closed-loop anesthesia computer controllers for AI titration of anesthesia level

Two editorials accompany these publications. In the first editorial, titled “Computer-assisted Anesthesia Care: Avoiding the Highway to HAL,”  author Dr. David Story writes, “Among the cautionary tales of computer-assisted human activity, 2001:A Space Odyssey is a standout. On a journey to Jupiter, HAL the computer kills most of the crew, forcing the survivor to deactivate HAL. Like space travel, while computer-assisted health care has great potential it also contains the full Rumsfeld range of knowns and unknowns.” Dr. Story concludes his editorial with, “As our pilot counterparts are doing in aviation,anesthesiologists should anticipate training in crises while using computer-assisted technologies, as well as maintaining the skills to ‘fly’ manually.  . . . None of us wants to manage a deteriorating patient by trying to deactivate a malfunctioning computer-assisted anesthesia system, only to have it respond, ‘I’m sorry . . . I can’t do that.’”

The second editorial in the same issue of Anesthesiology is titled “Back to the OR of the Future: How Do We Make It a Good One?”  Author Dr. Martin London writes, “The classic 1985 science fiction film Back to the Future transports the erstwhile protagonist (Marty McFly, played by a young Michael J. Fox) 30 years backwards into the past in the eccentric ‘Doc’ Brown’s custom DeLorean time machine, to deal with a series of comedic yet moral quandaries regarding his future existence. A notable quote by Doc Brown is, ‘The future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.’  Dr. London goes on to say, “The use of artificial intelligence–derived controllers clearly signals a new era in intraoperative hemodynamic management. . . . It does seem inevitable that software control of hemodynamics and anesthetic depth will become routine. Thus, we might ask, ‘What happens to the operator/clinician involved?’ Will it be more appropriate for a busy anesthesiologist covering multiple operating rooms to be supervising the admittedly extreme scenario of ‘information technology experts’ ensuring the machines are functioning properly or actual healthcare providers monitoring the patient and not the machine? And what happens when the “computers go down”? Who will rush in to fill the gap? Will the process be ‘good’ or will it be ‘dystopic?’”

Artificial intelligence in medicine is not the stuff of science fiction. AI in medicine is here. Will Artificial Intelligence in medicine assist doctors in compassionate care of their patients, or will AI present one more set of computers obstructing the relationships between healing professionals and those who need healing?

Medical journals like Anesthesiology reveal the future of medicine, as published data unfolds. A novel like Doctor Vita reveals a fictional future of medicine, based on the very trends that are going on today. 

Do you want a computer to care for you when your life is on the line? Do you want an algorithm, or a human, to be your doctor?  

Will you have a choice?

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

HOW THE INTERNET CHANGED ANESTHESIOLOGY FOREVER

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Anesthesia is a hands-on specialty. We use our manual skills daily to place breathing tubes, insert intravenous and intra-arterial catheters, and place needles for spinal punctures, epidural catheters, and regional nerve blocks. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the internet as “an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world.” This definition seems to have has very little to do with inserting breathing tubes, catheters, or needles, yet the internet changed anesthesiology forever.

The internet is the biggest change in anesthesiology since the FDA approvals of propofol in 1989, the laryngeal mask airway in 1991, and sevoflurane in 2002.

Picture this: your job requires you to spend the majority of your day in a windowless room with four other people. You cannot leave the room, and if you make a serious error in your work, someone can die. There is a telephone on the wall. You’re allowed to bring along a briefcase or a backpack. 

This was the description of the anesthesiology workplace prior to the internet. Vigilance regarding a sleeping patient’s vital signs was always paramount, but the constant effort to be vigilant could be mind-numbing. No one can stare at an ECG/oximeter/blood pressure monitor for hours without interruption. 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. Major adverse events seldom occur during the middle of a general anesthetic of long duration on a healthy patient. A comparison would be a commercial pilot flying an airplane from San Francisco to New York. The flight lasts 5 hours, but there would likely be only minor adjustments in course or altitude during the middle 4 hours. Anesthesia is said to be “99% boredom and 15 panic,” because 99% of the time patients are stable, yet 1% of the time, especially at the beginning and the end of anesthetics, urgent or emergency circumstances could threaten the life of the patient.

Since the development of the internet, anesthesia practice has changed forever. Every hospital operating room is equipped with a computer connected to the internet. Every anesthesia provider carries a smartphone connected to the internet. Many anesthesia providers carry a laptop or a tablet in their briefcases. These devices enable an anesthesiologist to remain connected to the outside world during surgery. Let’s look at the specific ways the internet has changed anesthesia practice:  

Electronic Medical Record anesthesia intraoperative vital signs record
  • Electronic medical records (EMRs). Love it or hate it, the EMR is here to stay. The EMR requires a computer terminal and screen in every operating room, and every hospital operating room must be connected to the internet. A patient’s EMR combines information from previous clinic visits, emergency room visits, laboratory and test results, and all data from the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative course on the day of surgery. Anesthesiologists type information into the EMR multiple times during each case.
AN EXAMPLE PUBMED SEARCH SCREEN
  • Immediate access to medical search engines. A major advantage of internet connectivity is the ability to immediately research any medical question or problem. Abstracts of every published medical study are available on Pubmed. For those of us on the faculty of a university hospital, hundreds of medical textbooks are immediately available online as reference sources. The entire catalog of FDA-approved drugs is listed on the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference) website, or on the PDR app on our smartphones. These are all invaluable tools which empower a physician anesthesiologist and improve care to every patient.  
  • Connectivity to other anesthesia providers is a third important advantage of the internet. We’re now able to immediately contact a colleague by cell phone, text message, or email if we have a question or a problem. In anesthesia care team models, in which a Certified Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) is physically present in the operating room while being supervised by an attending physician anesthesiologist, the MD anesthesiologist can be summoned to return to the operating room in seconds if a problem arises. You can also imagine a future vision of telemedicine in which an experienced physician anesthesiologist, who lives many miles or time zones away, can supervise a CRNA or an inexperienced anesthesiologist performing in-person patient care via Zoom conferencing. 

A 2010 publication in the journal Anaesthesia and Intensive Care stated, “Experienced anesthetists are skilled at multi-tasking while maintaining situational awareness, but there are limits. Noise, interruptions and emotional arousal are detrimental to the cognitive performance of anesthetists. While limited reading during periods of low task load may not reduce vigilance, computer use introduces text-based activities that are more interactive and potentially more distracting.”

From what I observe of anesthesia practice in the year 2021, intermittent use of the internet during anesthesia duty is not uncommon. The windowless confines of the operating room are now connected to the world.

Further scholarly research regarding computers, tablets, cell phones, and internet use in the operating room will no doubt be forthcoming. Stay tuned.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

HOW LONG DOES GENERAL ANESTHESIA LAST?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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“I’m going to have surgery to have my gall bladder out. How long will the anesthesia last?”

The query “How long does general anesthesia last?” is a common question before surgery. Modern anesthetics wear off quickly after surgery, but the answer to your question is “It depends.” It depends on: (1) which drugs were administered, (2) the length of the anesthetic time, (3) the type of surgery you had, (4) how much pain you have following the surgery, and (5) how healthy you are.

Let’s look at each of these factors:

  • WHICH DRUGS WERE ADMINISTERED.

The main classes of general anesthetic drugs are intravenous (IV) and inhalational.

IV DRUGS. The most common IV drugs include propofol and narcotics. 

Propofol is a hypnotic drug that renders people unconscious in seconds. A single dose of propofol wears off quickly, within minutes, because the molecules of propofol redistribute throughout the body, to wherever the bloodstream takes the propofol. Organs such as the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys receive high blood flow. Muscle and fat receive less blood flow. If propofol is continuously infused into your IV by a pump or a drip, propolol levels can remain nearly constant. When the infusion is stopped, the propofol concentration in the bloodstream drops, and the drug redistributes back from the brain, heart, live, and kidneys into the bloodstream once again. As the propofol concentration in the brain drops, you begin to awaken. When a propofol infusion is stopped, for most patients, within 10-15 minutes the propofol concentration in the bloodstream will decrease to 10-20% of its previous concentration. Intravenous anesthesia is well discussed in the textbook Miller’s Anesthesia, Ninth Edition, Chapter 23.

SEE ABOVE: For a bolus of propofol at time 0, the concentration peaks in less than one minute, and drops below the Therapeutic range by 8 minutes, meaning the patient will awaken.

Fentanyl is the most common IV narcotic used in surgery in the United States. Narcotics blunt pain, but will not keep you asleep unless administered in very high doses. When fentanyl or any IV narcotic is administered, its blood level is at its highest immediately, and then the blood concentration decreases just like propofol did, by redistributing throughout the rest of the body.

SEVOFLURANE VAPORIZER

INHALATIONAL DRUGS. Sevoflurane is the most commonly used potent inhalational anesthetic. Sevoflurane has both a quick onset and a quick offset time when ventilated into or out of your body. When your surgery ends, your anesthesiologist will turn off the sevoflurane in your inhaled gas mixture, and 90% of the sevoflurane is typically ventilated away in the first 10-15 minutes. Inhalational anesthesia is well discussed in the textbook Miller’s Anesthesia, Ninth Edition, Chapter 20.

Per the left graph, 80-90% of sevoflurane or N2O concentration is exhaled after 10 minutes time

Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is a commonly used anesthetic gas of modest potency. By itself, N2O cannot produce a general anesthetic. It is typically used in a concentration of 50%, as an adjunct to sevoflurane or narcotics. The advantages of N2O are that it is inexpensive, it wears off quickly, and it has a reliable safety record. Dentists sometimes use N2O to bring on inhaled sedation when they are doing office procedures such as filling a cavity.

Balanced anesthesia: Most general anesthetics include balanced doses of propofol, sevoflurane and a narcotic. How fast you wake at the end of your general anesthetic after a surgery depends on the sum total of how much propofol, sevoflurane, fentanyl (or other narcotic) you were given. Higher drug doses –> slower wakeup. Lower drug doses –> faster wakeup.

  • THE LENGTH OF THE ANESTHETIC TIME.

If you have a brief thirty-minute anesthetic to repair a tendon defect in your hand, you’ll wake up quickly, because the doses of the IV and inhalational drugs discussed above will be lower than if you had an eight-hour surgery.

  • THE TYPE OF SURGERY YOU HAD.

Surgeries differ in terms of the amount of anesthetic required. A colonoscopy, for example, is technically not a surgery, but rather an endoscopic examination of the inside of your colon. There is no incision, there is usually only moderate discomfort, and there is no significant postoperative pain. The only anesthetic required may be an infusion of propofol alone, and when that infusion is stopped, you’ll wake in 5 minutes. In contrast, if you have an open heart surgery, such as coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), the anesthetic plan may be to keep you asleep for several hours after the surgery in the ICU, or even overnight, while your heart, lungs, blood pressure, and temperature recover from the surgery. For the gall bladder excision surgery you’re scheduled for, the typical anesthetic and surgery duration is about two hours. The anesthetic plan would be to turn off the IV and inhaled anesthetic drugs at the conclusion of the surgery, leaving just enough narcotic concentration in your bloodstream so you will awaken with excellent pain control. The duration of this wakeup from when the anesthetics are turned off until you are awake and talking will be 10 – 20 minutes for most patients.

  • HOW MUCH PAIN YOU HAVE AFTER THE SURGERY.

Some surgeries do not hurt. For example, a small breast biopsy is relatively painless. In contrast, an intraabdominal operation such as removal of a portion of your colon will cause much more pain in the hours and days following surgery. Even though 90% of the propofol and sevoflurane will wear off in the first two hours after abdominal surgery, you’ll require ongoing doses of narcotics such as morphine or Dilaudid to be comfortable. Ongoing narcotics cause sedation, and you’ll be sleepy for the duration of time that you require IV narcotics for pain relief.

  • HOW HEALTHY YOU ARE.

All else being equal, patients with normal heart and lung function, and normal body weight, will awaken sooner than patients with decreased heart function, decreased lung function, and/or obesity.

***THE ROLE OF LOCAL ANESTHETICS***

One last topic is the role of local anesthetics to speed anesthetic wakeup and recovery. Local anesthetics such as lidocaine, ropivicaine, or bupivacaine can be injected via needles to effect pain relief. There are several ways this can be done:

  1. Local infiltration of the anesthetic into the skin incision, into the joint if you’ve had an arthroscopy, or into the tissues surrounding the surgical site. Local infiltration directly decreases pain in that region, and therefore decreases the amount of general anesthesia drugs needed or narcotic drugs needed. 
  2. Spinal or epidural blocks, administered by the anesthesiologist into the low back, cause the loss of sedation in the abdomen, pelvis, and lower extremities. This directly decreases pain, and therefore decreases the amount of general anesthesia drugs or narcotic drugs needed. 
  3. Ultrasound directed regional nerve blocks administered by the anesthesiologist, can effect numbness in a shoulder, upper extremity, knee, leg, or foot enervated by a specific nerve. This decreases the amount of general anesthesia drugs or narcotic drugs needed. 

Some examples of how long it takes to wake up, if you’re healthy, after general anesthesia for common procedures:

Colonoscopy                                                    5 minutes

Knee arthroscopy                                            5-10 minutes

Tonsillectomy                                                  5-15 minutes

Breast augmentation                                      10-15 minutes

Abdominal/flanks liposuction                        10-15 minutes

Rhinoplasty/nose surgery                               10-15 minutes

Laparoscopic abdominal surgery                  10-20 minutes

Total knee/hip replacements                         10-20 minutes

Brain surgery/craniotomy                              15-25 minutes

Open heart surgery                                        2 – 12 hours

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

DYING UNDER GENERAL ANESTHESIA

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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You’re an anesthesiologist and you’re contacted by a patient who is dying of cancer. He wants an end of life anesthetic so that he will be unconscious and die without pain and suffering. What do you do? Will you enable dying under general anesthesia?

A recent article from the United Kingdom discussed this topic of end of life anesthesia, otherwise known as “terminal anesthesia.” Terminal anesthesia refers to a situation when a patient has a terminal illness such as end-stage cancer and is suffering through their last days. They request to have a general anesthetic so they are unconscious throughout the process of dying under general anesthesia.

Is anyone doing terminal anesthesia anywhere? The Journal of Medical Ethics reported that in 2016, “France passed a law granting terminally ill patients the right to continuous deep sedation until death. This right was proposed as an alternative to euthanasia and was presented as the ‘French response’ to problems at the end of life. The law draws a distinction between continuous deep sedation and euthanasia.” 

Euthanasia, or the ending of life through pharmacologic intervention, is illegal in the United States, the United Kingdom, and most nations. In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Jack Kevorkian of the United States  infamously created a euthanasia machine that injected lethal doses of sodium pentothal (a hypnotic sleep drug), potassium chloride (an overdose of potassium which caused cardiac arrest), and pancuronium (a paralyzing drug) into terminal patients who requested a pharmacologic suicide. Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of second degree murder, and served 8 years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his euthanasia machine

Dying patients may have an interest in terminal anesthesia. In a survey of 500 individuals in the United Kingdom regarding end-of-life options, 88% of the respondents said they would like the option of a general anesthetic if they were dying.  

What would terminal anesthesia look like? Medication(s) would be administered through an intravenous line to bring on unconsciousness without hastening death. These last three words are key, because terminal anesthesia is specifically not to be euthanasia. Terminal patients are frail, and their cardiac and respiratory systems will be sensitive to oversedation. Terminal anesthesia is not to directly stop the patient from breathing, stop their hearts from beating, or put them at risk from aspirating food into their lungs. The duration of the IV sedation/anesthesia must be maintained until the patient’s heart eventually stops because of their underlying terminal medical illness. Because of the danger of food aspiration into the windpipe (trachea), tube feedings to the stomach during the time of this terminal anesthetic would not be allowed. 

What drugs could be used for terminal anesthesia? Propofol (an IV hypnotic drug) and midazolam (an IV benzodiazepine also known as Versed) are the most likely agents. The initial infusion of these drugs must be gradual, because bolus doses of these powerful agents into the bloodstream of a frail, end of life patient, could easily halt their breathing and hasten death. No pulse oximetry or other monitors would be used, and the person administering the drug would not remain in constant attendance with the patient. These two facts—the lack of monitoring and the lack of being physically present to attend to the patient—are boldly in defiance of what anesthesiologists do when they administer general anesthesia to patients. The motto of the American Society of Anesthesiologists is “Vigilance.” Terminal anesthesia implies minimal vigilance, and for this reason I cannot imagine the practice being approved in the United States.

An April 2021 publication in the journal Anaesthesia disagrees. The authors describe end of life anesthesia as “an impending development for which the specialty should prepare.” Co-author Jaideep Pandit, MD, professor of anesthesia at Oxford University, said, “Ethically, it is the right thing to do to make this offer to dying patients where it is technically feasible and the literature says it is. The desire to be unconscious in times of great adversity is understandable—it isn’t surprising or wrong to want to be unconscious in adverse situations. We as physicians are here to help, and if we have the means to help and meet the patient’s desire and it is ethical to do so, then we should strive to make this option feasible.” This article described the first use of end of life anesthesia as occurring over 25 years ago: “The first description of using general anesthesia in end‐of‐life care was in 1995 by John Moyle, a consultant anesthetist and palliative care physician. Moyle recognized the limitations of conventional approaches . . . Moyle developed a protocol for infusing the then relatively new anesthetic agent propofol and described its use in two patients, who died peacefully after 4 and 9 days of continuous infusion. . . . Moyle and others recommended very slow intravenous infusion by a pump at a carefully titrated dose (e.g. just 5 mg.h‐1 vs. the 100–200 mg typically used as a bolus) The depth of anesthesia achieved was inadequate for a surgical procedure, but was ideal for an undisturbed dying patient.” 

A study from Sweden described their experience with propofol for end of life sedation. Two indications for using propofol were identified. The first was refractory nausea and vomiting, and the second was the need for palliative sedation due to refractory anxiety or agitation, with or without intractable pain. Monitoring of the patient was as follows: “During the first hour of treatment, the patients were checked repeatedly by both the nurse and the physician caring for the patient. Then, evaluation was performed after 2, 6, and 12 hours. These assessments were preferably made by the physician, but when symptom control had been established, the evaluation was made by the nurse. Patients on continuous treatment with propofol were thereafter evaluated at least twice daily by the nurse in addition to their daily routine care. The physician visited the patient at least once daily for evaluation.” The mean dose range of propofol during treatment was between 0.90 and 2.13 mg/kg/h, (or for an average 70-kilogram patient, between 70 and 150 mg of propofol per hour). The length of treatment with propofol varied between 2 hours and 44 days. The study reported “All but three patients died at the unit, and the median survival was 38 days, compared with the usual median survival of 14 days at the unit.” 

Euthanasia is illegal, but general anesthesia is legal. Could general anesthesia really be approved so that individuals do not have to experience the suffering of dying? What if the United States passed a law, similar to the 2016 law in France, that granted terminally ill patients the right to continuous deep sedation until death? Will this type of terminal sedation/anesthesia ever happen in the United States? It’s currently common to utilize anesthesia/deep sedation for patients who are on ventilators in an intensive care unit (ICU). If such a patient has an untreatable illness, they may die while they are in the ICU under deep sedation, but the application of terminal anesthesia outside of an ICU is not seen in the United States today.

There are other ethical, medicolegal and practical implications to utilizing terminal anesthesia. Who would give the IV sedation/general anesthesia? The Hippocratic Oath states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan,” so it’s unlikely any American physician would administer the anesthetic. Would the medical malpractice court system litigate that cases of terminal anesthesia were indeed euthanasia, and therefore illegal? If the American Society of Anesthesiologists opposed the idea, could continuous deep sedation at end-of-life ever come to fruition? What if some medical professional with a license to administer anesthesia decided to open up a practice of administering terminal anesthetics? Could such an individual collect cash payments or insurance payments for administering general anesthesia to patients who were on hospice, and thereby earn a large quantum of money for each case? 

Everyone fears dying, and no one wants to have a painful or torturous death. Expect to hear more discussion about this topic in years to come, but don’t expect physician anesthesiologists in the United States to prescribe or administer terminal anesthesia any time soon. 

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

WILL CRNAs REPLACE MD ANESTHESIOLOGISTS?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Who is responsible for your anesthetic? A doctor or a nurse? On March 28, 2021 the anesthesia world in the United States was rocked by the headline: “Wisconsin Hospital Replaces All Anesthesiologists With CRNAs.“  

The hospital was Watertown Regional Medical Center, located in Watertown, Wisconsin,  population 23,861, midway between Milwaukee and Madison. The medical center previously had an anesthesia staff that included both MDs and CRNAs (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists).  Why did this change happen? The article didn’t say. The article did say that “Envision, a large medical staffing agency that works with the hospital . . . will oversee the anesthesiology team. A quote from the Medscape article read: “Adam Dachman, MD, a surgeon at the hospital, speaking for himself, said he has no problem using nurse anesthetists. (He said) ‘It’s a misconception that physicians are required to administer anesthesia.’” 

Is this a watershed moment for the profession of physician anesthesiologists? Are CRNAs going to replace MD anesthesiologists all over America, changing the profession forever?

In a word, no. 

Will certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) will be major factor in anesthesia care in the 21st century? Yes. See this link. There are roles for both CRNAs and physician anesthesiologists in the 21st century. 

Let’s step back and look at healthcare practitioners from the view of a patient. Let’s say you’re a patient, and you enter a medical clinic for a checkup. An individual who is not a doctor interviews you, it’s usually quite clear by their nametag and by their verbal introduction whether they are a physician, a nurse, a physician assistant, or a nurse practitioner. Each of these job titles has a different educational background, a different duration of training, and a differing level of autonomy and responsibility. If a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner presents themselves as your healthcare provider in a clinic, you realize you are not being attended to by a physician.

When you enter a hospital or surgery center for a surgery and an anesthesia professional approaches you prior to your surgery, that professional could be a physician anesthesiologist, a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, or an Anesthesia Assistant (AA). Each of these job titles has a different educational background, a different duration of training, and a differing level of autonomy and responsibility. If a CRNA presents themselves as the sole anesthesia professional responsible for evaluating you and making the anesthesia plan and carrying out all the anesthesia care,  you realize you’re not being attended to by a physician.

Are CRNAs and anesthesiologists equals? No, they are not. The difference in training is profound. CRNAs are registered nurses with a minimum of one year experience as a critical care nurse followed by, on the average, an anesthesia training period of three years. Anesthesiologists are medical doctors, and their training of four years of medical school followed by a minimum of four years of anesthesia residency following makes them specialists in all aspects of anesthesia care and perioperative medicine.

Physician anesthesiologists frequently employ CRNAs to assist them in the anesthesia care team model. In this model, an MD anesthesiologist supervises up to four CRNAs who work in up to four different operating rooms simultaneously. The responsibility for the anesthesia care in this model resides with the supervising MD anesthesiologist. 

The American Society of Anesthesiologists STATEMENT ON THE ANESTHESIA CARE TEAM “Anesthesiology is the practice of medicine including, but not limited to, preoperative patient evaluation, anesthetic planning, intraoperative and postoperative care and the management of systems and personnel that support these activities. . . . This care is personally provided by or directed by the anesthesiologist.”

Governors in 19 primarily Western states (Wisconsin, Arizona, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, California, Colorado, and Kentucky) have signed legislation allowing CRNAs to opt out of physician supervision and practice anesthesiology alone. The primary motivation for this change was the fact that hospitals in rural communities had inadequate numbers of physician anesthesiologists. Empowering CRNAs to work alone made surgery more accessible to patients in these rural areas. I have no personal connection to or communication with the Watertown Regional Medical Center, but a small community like the one in Watertown Wisconsin likely was unable to recruit or retain a full lineup of MD anesthesiologists, so they were forced to staff with CRNAs. The Watertown Regional Medical Center website, under “Find a Doctor,” as of April 25, 2021 listed 3 MDs and 10 CRNAs.  

Is there any data that CRNA anesthesia care is less safe than MD anesthesia care?  There is. Doctor J H Silber’s landmark study from the University of Pennsylvania documented that both 30-day mortality and failure-to-rescue rates were lower when anesthesia care was supervised by anesthesiologists, as opposed to anesthesia care by unsupervised nurse anesthetists. This study has been widely discussed. The CRNA community dismissed the study’s conclusions, citing that the Silber study was a retrospective study. 

An anesthesia blog, Great Z’s, recently posted a column titled CRNAs Take Over America. The column said, “the anesthesia care team model will be the end of physician anesthesiologists. With the ACT model, anesthesiologists’ roles become more like physician assistants. We’re outside the operating rooms, dealing with preop history taking, starting IV’s, making sure the patients are ready for their surgeries. Meanwhile, the CRNAs are the ones that are administering the anesthesia. They are the ones the surgeons will interact with 90% of the time. Our interactions with surgeons diminish to the point where they feel the CRNAs are doing all the work and no physician anesthesiologist is needed. This makes the hospital administration’s decision to save money by firing all the anesthesiologists that much easier and less controversial with the staff.” 

I disagree that MD anesthesiologists will be pushed out the doors nationwide. Easy anesthetic cases can be done by either MDs or CRNAs, but complex cases (open heart surgery, brain surgery, neonatal surgery, surgery on patients with multiple medical comorbidities) will nearly always require physician anesthesiologists. I believe surgeons will support the role of physician anesthesiologists in their operating rooms. Surgeons have no incentive to replace physician anesthesiologists with CRNAs. Patients have no incentive to replace physician anesthesiologists with CRNAs. Would CRNA anesthesia care be less expensive? There is a paucity of data to support that, with only one study to date, published in a nursing journal (Journal of Nursing Economics) which concluded that, “CRNAs acting as the sole anesthesia provider cost 25 percent less than the second lowest cost model.” 

In California where I live and work, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the independent practice for CRNAs into law in 2009. California physician anesthesiologists were angry and concerned about the legislation change at the time, but in the 12+ years since 2009, the penetration of unsupervised CRNA practice in California was been minimal. The traditional old models of physician-only anesthesia or the anesthesia care team are still the dominant modes of practice in California. 

One threat that remains troubling is the specter that national staffing companies (see the Watertown story above) may force out MDs and hire predominantly CRNAs, collect the standard anesthesia fees for each case, pay the CRNAs less than they paid MD anesthesiologists, and therefore increase profit to the shareholders of the parent company. What can anesthesiologists do about this problem? Don’t sell your anesthesia practice to a national company. But if your hospital CEO makes an exclusive contract with such a company, it’s possible you could be forced out without any choice.

CRNAs will have a significant role in American healthcare in the future. The most significant role will be played with an MD anesthesiologist at their right hand supervising them. Non-supervised CRNAs will be found mainly at rural hospitals. I don’t see a significant number of unsupervised CRNAs working in Palo Alto, Manhattan, or Boston anytime soon.

The future for physician anesthesiologists still looks bright.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 170/99?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

WAS TIGER WOODS DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Was Tiger Woods driving under the influence (DUI) on the morning of February 23rd, 2021 when he was injured in a single car accident? 

Perhaps his anesthesiologist knows. 

Tiger Woods underwent surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center just hours after his single car rollover vehicle crash. Surgeons performed a pinning of a tibia (shin bone) fracture and pinning of an ankle fracture. Prior to administering an anesthetic, it would be important for the anesthesiologist to know the toxicology screen results in any patient who just survived such an accident. The anesthesiologist needs to know what other drugs, if any, were present in the patient’s system at the time of the crash, because this fact could influence anesthesia management. Drug use could mean central nervous system depressants (opioids, alcohol, sedatives, hypnotics, sleeping pills) or stimulants (cocaine, amphetamines). If sedative drugs were present, there can be a synergistic effect between the drugs and the anesthetic medications. If stimulant drugs were present, the patient may have tolerance and/or increased anesthetic dose requirements. 

A 2017 anesthesia study stated that “for optimal patient care through the perioperative period, it is critical to obtain information about patient drug use and other associated treatment in order to construct an appropriate anesthetic plan, including specific considerations during surgery, emergence, and in the post anesthesia care unit.” 

In a study from Nature, 1007 consecutive patients undergoing emergency surgery were screened for illicit drug use (IDU). Seventy-five patients (7.45%) were found to be positive for IDU, even though zero patients admitted a positive history of illicit drug use. Of the 75 patients, 50 tested positive for morphine, 22 tested positive for methamphetamine, 13 tested positive for ketamine, 6 tested positive for two drugs, and 2 tested positive for all three drugs. The study concluded, “Knowledge of illicit drug users (IDUs) is important because of the comorbidity related to drug use.”

Miller’s Anesthesia (9th edition, 2020, Chapter 31, Preoperative Evaluation, authored by Wijeysundera and Finlayson) states, “A patient with a history of current or previous alcohol or drug addiction presents special challenges for the perioperative team. . . . Addictive disease should be considered permanent even in patients who have had long periods of abstinence. . . . Substance abuse disorders are risk factors for poor outcomes in the perioperative setting.”

The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prohibits a patient’s doctors from divulging any private healthcare information (PHI) to anyone who is not caring for that patient. The anesthesiologists may know whether a motor vehicle accident patient was part of a DUI incident, but they will not release the results of such a tox screen to the press. 

The sheriff who arrived at the Woods crash scene stated there was no evidence that Woods was impaired or intoxicated at the time of the crash in Rolling Hills Estates, California. The police said they “did not issue a citation for Woods . . . To issue a ticket for reckless driving would require evidence that Woods had committed multiple violations before the crash, such as unsafe lane changes, or passing other cars unsafely, according to investigators. . . . Woods had no recollection of the collision, investigators said at the press conference.” 

I’m not a lawyer, but I presume that tox screen results could be subpoenaed if a crime had been committed. For example, if an automobile collides with a school bus and kills someone, then I presume the driver’s medical test results would be part of a criminal investigation. 

According to the forensic report, Tiger Woods was speeding as fast as 75 miles per hour, or more than 45 mph faster than the legal speed limit before his SUV crashed. Investigators said the accident was “the result of Woods driving in an unsafe manner for road conditions. . . . The evidence suggested the golfer didn’t brake or steer out of the emergency for nearly 400 feet after striking an eight-inch curb in the median.” 

Per Golfweek magazine: “forensic experts say the evidence suggests Woods was not conscious when he left his lane and kept going in a straight line before crashing. Instead of staying with the downhill road as it curved right, he went straight over the curb in the median to the left, hit a wooden sign and kept going in a straight line into opposing traffic lanes before leaving the road, hitting a tree and rolling over. Jonathan Cherney, an accident reconstruction expert and former police detective who walked the scene, told USA TODAY Sports it was ‘like a classic case of falling asleep behind the wheel, because the road curves and his vehicle goes straight.’ There were no skid marks on the road, Villanueva said. Instead, Woods’ Genesis SUV kept going straight for several hundred feet. Woods later told sheriff’s deputies he couldn’t remember how the crash occurred and didn’t remember even driving.” 

Per USA Today: “’The report doesn’t deal with the underlying cause of the crash,’ said Charles Schack, a former New Hampshire state police trooper who is now president of Crash Experts, which analyzes traffic accidents for law firms and insurance companies. ‘It addresses the data superficially with no apparent curiosity as to why Tiger drove for hundreds of feet without adjusting his steering, braking, or speed. Taking away the high-profile aspect of this crash and looking at the data and roadway, it appears that the driver made no attempt to follow the roadway during the moments leading to the crash. This is typical of a driver who was incapacitated due to a medical issue, falling asleep or being impaired.’” 

Can an individual take a sleep medication prescribed by a physician, such as Ambien, at nighttime and still have drowsiness from the medication which impairs their driving ability the next morning? Yes. In 2013 the Food and Drug Administration released the following Safety Communication regarding zolpidem (Ambien):

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is notifying the public of new information about zolpidem, a widely prescribed insomnia drug. FDA recommends that the bedtime dose be lowered because new data show that blood levels in some patients may be high enough the morning after use to impair activities that require alertness, including driving. Today’s announcement focuses on zolpidem products approved for bedtime use, which are marketed as generics and under the brand names Ambien, Ambien CR, Edluar, and Zolpimist.

FDA is also reminding the public that all drugs taken for insomnia can impair driving and activities that require alertness the morning after use. Drowsiness is already listed as a common side effect in the drug labels of all insomnia drugs, along with warnings that patients may still feel drowsy the day after taking these products. Patients who take insomnia drugs can experience impairment of mental alertness the morning after use, even if they feel fully awake. 

FDA urges health care professionals to caution all patients (men and women) who use these zolpidem products about the risks of next‐morning impairment for activities that require complete mental alertness, including driving. 

There appears to be a public safety concern that individuals who take Ambien for sleep may be impaired when driving a vehicle the following morning. 

Was Tiger Woods impaired on the morning of his single car accident? I don’t know, and it’s not my intent to accuse him in any way. I wish him a speedy and complete recovery, and hope we can all watch him play golf at a high level once again. The purpose of this column is to inform readers that: 1) anesthesiologists need to know the results of blood and/or urine toxicology screens before they are administer general anesthesia to an automobile trauma victim; 2) sleeping aids such as Ambien (zolpidem) carry an FDA warning that they can impair activities such as driving the morning after administration; and 3) HIPAA law prevents physicians from disclosing the medical records of patients to the media.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

ALCOHOL AND ANESTHESIA

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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You’re a patient scheduled for elective surgery tomorrow. You’re nervous and you’d like to drink a glass of wine (or two) at dinner the night before the surgery. Is this OK? What’s the relationship between alcohol and anesthesia?

Alcohol use is common in the United States—fourteen percent of the United States adult population suffers from alcohol addiction.  Surgery is common in the United States—there were more than 17 million surgeries performed in America in 2014. The intersection of an alcohol-addicted patient and surgery is therefore common. How much alcohol consumption is too much? The thresholds for defining high-risk alcohol consumption are 5 or more drinks in one day (>14 drinks per week on average) for males under 65 years of age, and 4 or more drinks in a day (>7 drinks per week on average) for all females and males 65 or more years of age. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 9th edition, Chapter 31, Preoperative Evaluation) All adults and adolescents should be questioned regarding their history of alcohol use prior to anesthesia. 

Let’s look at the risks for an acutely alcohol intoxicated patient first. Hospital emergency rooms have no shortage of drunken individuals who’ve been involved in motor vehicle trauma, motorcycle accidents, gang violence, or domestic violence. Acute intoxication with alcohol is usually diagnosed by history or by the smell of a patient’s breath. If an individual requires an acute surgical procedure, their level of intoxication is documented by measuring the alcohol concentration in their blood prior to surgery. Extreme levels of acute alcohol intoxication can cause coma or stupor, because alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, but other causes of decreased mental status must also be considered. An altered mental status in a trauma victim who smells of alcohol may be secondary to the central nervous system depressant effect of alcohol, or it may also be secondary to intracranial trauma. A CT scan of the head is indicated. High levels of alcohol intoxication alter a patient’s tolerance to anesthetic medications, because many anesthetics are central nervous system depressants just like alcohol, and there can be an additive effect between the alcohol and the anesthetic doses. Polydrug abuse is common, and blood tests are done on intoxicated patients to determine if other central nervous system depressants (opioids or sedatives), stimulants (cocaine, amphetamines), or other psychotropic substances (e.g. cannabis REF) are present. During surgery, anesthesiologists titrate medications to the desired effect by adding doses cautiously and following the effects on the patient’s vital signs of blood pressure and heart rate. Following surgery, anesthesiologists are vigilant symptoms of acute alcohol withdrawal syndromes. Chronic heavy alcohol use is associated with a two-fold to five-fold increase in postoperative complications, including higher rates of admission to intensive care units and increased lengths of hospital stay. (Chapman R, Plaat F, et al, Alcohol and Anaesthesia, Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain, Volume 9, number 1, 2009, pp 10-13)

For elective scheduled surgeries, patients are seldom intoxicated, but the issue  of their chronic alcohol intake is important. Doctors and nurses question each patient regarding the history of alcohol consumption prior to surgery, and are aware that patients often downplay the quantity of their alcohol consumption. A patient who admits to one or two drinks per day may very well consume twice that amount. Chronic alcohol use can increase the dose requirements for general anesthetics, either because of induction/stimulation of the microsomal ethanol-oxidizing system (cytochrome P-450 system), or through the development of cross tolerance to other central nervous system drugs. (Chapman R, Plaat F, et al, Alcohol and Anaesthesia, Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain, Volume 9, number 1, 2009, pp 10-13)

In contrast, chronic heavy alcohol use can cause cirrhosis and depress liver function. Certain anesthetic drugs, especially narcotics, are cleared by the liver, and decreased liver metabolism of narcotics can lead to relative overdoses. Chronic heavy alcohol use can also lead to cardiomyopathy with depressed ejection of blood from the heart, causing low blood pressures during and after anesthesia. Chronic alcohol dependence can cause central nervous system, gastrointestinal system,  hematological, metabolic, and musculoskeletal disorders. Because of the contrasting pharmacologic and physiologic effects of chronic alcohol dependence in a surgical patient, anesthesiologists will titrate the administration of  medications by monitoring the patient’s vital signs of blood pressure and heart rate, and adjusting the anesthetic depth required.

As a patient, what should you do? 

Be honest with yourself and your doctors if you drink daily. Alcohol dependence can and will affect your anesthetic and your body’s reaction to anesthetic drug dosing. Your anesthesiologist will be your consultant, and will administer anesthetic medications and doses in a range that is safe for you. In a perfect world, patients with heavy alcohol dependence should be identified before elective surgical procedures and referred to alcohol counseling services.

Does mild alcohol consumption of one to two glasses of wine or one to two beers per day increase anesthetic risk prior to surgery? Your risks will ultimately depend on the complexity of the surgery and the number of other medical problems that you have, but for most patients it’s unlikely you’ll have any anesthetic or surgical complication based only on this amount of alcohol consumption. One glass of wine with dinner may very well help you relax and get adequate sleep the night before your anesthetic.

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popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?

The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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One of my readers asked me to describe a day in the life of an anesthesiologist, as he was considering a career in anesthesiology. To aid you in visualizing yourself in the hospital, I’m substituting the pronoun “you” instead of “I” in the narrative below.

Your day is as follows, Doctor:

0530 hours – Your alarm goes off, awakening you and starting your morning. (Anesthesia is not the career for you if you like to sleep late—surgery always begins at 0730 hours). You complete your morning bathroom and breakfast routines, and leave your residence at 0630 hours for the hospital.

0645 hours—You arrive at the hospital, use your ID to open the gate to the parking lot, and walk one hundred yards from the parking lot to the hospital entrance. You take the elevator to the third floor and proceed to the locker room. The scrubs are enclosed in a device not dissimilar to a soda machine, and you need your ID to operate it. The machine opens and you extract a scrub top and scrub bottom in your size. You leave your street clothes in your locker. Because anesthesiologists do not scrub in a sterile fashion, it’s OK to wear your watch and ring., and to bring your cell phone with you.

Empty Operating Room

0655 hours—You don a bouffant hat and a facemask, and enter your operating room. Your hospital contains multiple operating rooms, and today you are in room #10. Your briefcase contains your personal medical equipment and office items you need for the day. Inside the operating room, the scrub tech is already dressed in a sterile gown and gloves, and is preparing the instruments the surgeon will use to operate on the first patient. The first surgery today is a procedure devised to treat obstructive sleep apnea, a procedure called a maxillary-mandibular osteotomy. An ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist will saw through the patient’s upper and lower facial bones, extend their bite forward to open the back of the throat further, and then fixate the bones in their new positions. The surgery will take approximately three hours. 

Your station in the operating room consists of an anesthesia machine; a bevy of vital signs monitors; a computerized pharmacy cart; a cart full of syringes and equipment; and the computer which handles the hospital’s electronic medical record (EMR).

Anesthesia Workstation

You log into the EMR system, and then you log into your first patient’s chart. You’ve looked over the patient’s information the night before, and you now review everything in detail, including the history, physical findings, vital signs, height, weight, body-mass index (BMI) from this morning, and any laboratory results.  

            Next you log into the patient’s file on the computerized pharmacy cart, and extract the controlled substances/drugs (Versed and fentanyl) that you will use for this case. The lower drawers to the computerized pharmacy cart unlock, and you’re able to access the propofol you’ll use to induce anesthesia. You fill a 20-milliliter syringe with 20 ml of propofol, and set it on the countertop. You remove a plastic breathing endotracheal tube (ETT) from its wrapper and set it next to the propofol syringe. You remove a lighted laryngoscope from a drawer and set it next to the ETT. You prepare several empty syringes which you’ll use to inject medications into your patient’s intravenous (IV) line.

Labelled anesthetic syringes

            Next you turn to the anesthesia machine and run through a checklist to assure it is connected to oxygen, full of the liquid form of the general anesthetic sevoflurane, and that all the hoses and valves are airtight and operational. You check the suction catheter system to document there is negative pressure should you need to suck saliva or vomitus out of the patient’s airway. You reach into your briefcase and pull out the stethoscope and peripheral nerve stimulator you’ll use during the case. 

Pre-Anesthesia Room

0700 hours—It’s time to meet your first patient. You walk into the pre-operative area, where your patient is wearing a hospital gown and is lying on a gurney. At this point every patient is apprehensive and anxious. You do your best to reassure him as you introduce yourself and sit down at the foot of the bed. Rather than launching immediately into medical questions, you begin by asking him what he would normally be doing on this day if he wasn’t at the hospital. This way you and the patient can connect on a human level before beginning the anesthetic proceedings. The patient will probably already have an IV in their arm, placed by a registered nurse. (To the contrary, in our practice we physician anesthesiologists start the IVs ourselves. We do this because we’re skilled at placing IVs painlessly and successfully, it doesn’t take that much time, and it gives the patient confidence that we’ll continue to take care of them at the highest level.)

            You ask the patient questions that are pertinent regarding their medical history. For example, if a patient has a history of asthma you’ll ask him if he has ever had an asthma attack severe enough to require treatment in an emergency room. If the patient was older than 50 years, you’ll ask him if he gets shortness of breath when he climbs two flights of stairs.

            Once your questions are answered, you’ll do a pertinent physical exam of the patient’s airway, heart, and lungs. Then you’ll explain the sequence of the anesthetic, as well as the anesthetic alternatives and risks. Your monologue goes as follows: “I’ll begin by giving you a medication in your IV which will make you feel less anxious. Then we’ll roll down the hallway into the operating room. There I’ll give you a medication which makes you lose consciousness. You’ll be asleep for the entire surgery. I’ll be with you that entire time, and you won’t feel any pain, or experience any awareness. During the time you’re asleep, there’s an airway tube in place. I’ll remove the tube when you wake up. You may have a sore throat from the tube. You may have nausea after general anesthesia. You’ll wake up reasonably comfortable, but as the general anesthesia wears off you’ll likely experience the onset of pain. There’ll be a nurse standing right next to you in the Recovery Room, and he or she will administer pain relieving medication to you if and when you need it. Do you have any questions?”

            After the patient gives verbal consent, you administer 2 ml of Versed (midazolam), a Valium-like benzodiazepine, into the IV. Within a minute or two, the patient feels the relaxing effect of the Versed, and you roll his gurney down the hallway toward the operating room.

Moving a patient from the gurney to the operating room table.

0715 hours—You roll the gurney in to the operating room. The patient moves himself from the gurney to the operating room table. You and the operating room nurse work to connect the patient to the standard vital signs monitors: the pulse oximeter on his fingertip, the three (or five) electrocardiogram stickers across his chest, and a blood pressure cuff on his arm. You turn to the EMR computer, and with a series of clicks you document the start of anesthesia time; begin data collection from the vital signs monitors; and identify which device (anesthesia machine/monitors in which operating room) you are connected to and receiving input from. You inject two prophylactic anti-nausea drugs, Zofran (ondansetron) and Decadron (dexamethasone) into the IV, and inject 2 ml (100 micrograms) of the narcotic fentanyl. You place an oxygen mask over the patient’s face so that the room air (21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen) that he has been breathing is replaced by 100% oxygen prior to going to sleep.

0725 hours—It’s time to begin anesthesia induction. You inject 40 mg of lidocaine, a local anesthetic, into the IV to blunt the burning sensation that propofol can cause. Then you inject 20 ml (200 mg) of propofol into the IV. Propofol is an opaque white liquid which disappears from the IV line as it enters the vein in the patient’s arm. Within 20 – 30 seconds the patient is unconscious. You ventilate the patient with oxygen for two breaths via the facemask to document that the airway is open and patent, and then you inject 4 ml (40 mg) of the paralyzing drug rocuronium into the IV. You continue to ventilate the patient via the facemask as the patient becomes paralyzed and unable to breathe for himself. You monitor the progression toward paralysis with a small battery-powered nerve stimulator device which you hold against the facial nerve area lateral to his eyebrow on the side of his face. 

Nasotracheal Endotracheal Tube

This surgery requires a specialized ETT which enters through the nose, courses through the back of the throat, and then passes between the vocal cords into the trachea (windpipe). You remove the facemask so the surgeon can insert cotton swaths soaked in local anesthetic into each nostril. Once all motor twitch activity is absent on the facial nerve monitor, you insert the nasal breathing tube, coated with a lubricating jelly, into the right nostril. You advance the tube through the nose until the tip appears in the oral cavity. At this point, you insert the lighted laryngoscope into the patient’s mouth, visualize the vocal cords, and push the ETT from outside the nose through the vocal cords into the trachea. You use a syringe to inflate air into the balloon cuff on the distal end of the ETT, and connect the proximal end of the ETT to the hoses on your anesthesia machine. You inflate the lungs via the breathing system, and listen with your stethoscope to document there are appropriate breath sounds in both the left and right lungs. You turn on your anesthetic vaporizer to administer a concentration of 1.5% sevoflurane gas to the patient. You tape the patients eyes closed so that they do not dry out under general anesthesia. Next you unlock the bed so that it can be rotated 180 degrees, so you are near the patient’s feet and the surgeon has the head of the bed to himself.

            While the surgeon, the nurse, and the scrub tech prepare the patient for the surgical incisions, you administer the antibiotic Kefzol (cephazolin) into the IV. Then you spend 10 minutes of time on the EMR, documenting every drug you injected and all the procedures you performed.

Maxillary surgery

0800 hours—Surgery begins. You titrate the depth of anesthetic drugs to match the degree of surgical stimulus. You do this by monitoring the blood pressure and heart rate, and use a variety of IV drugs to keep the vital signs from straying too high or too low from their pre-operative values. By 0830 hours you are finally able to sit down. The EMR inputs the vital signs automatically from the patient monitors into the medical record. You are vigilant regarding the surgical procedure, the IV infusing into the patient, the ventilator, and the inhaled and injectable anesthetics administered. At certain times during the case, when the surgeon is sawing into  the facial bones, he will ask you to lower the patient’s blood pressure in order to minimize bleeding from the bone. You do this by adding intravenous anti-hypertensive injections, and/or by deepening the level of general anesthetic drugs. As you near the end of this first case, you log into the second case of your anesthetic list on the EMR, and begin information gathering and EMR documentation as you did for your first case.

1130 hours—The surgery ends. You supervise the rotating of the operating room table 180 degrees, so the patient’s head and airway are adjacent to the anesthesia equipment again. You discontinue all anesthetic drugs and wait for the patient to regain consciousness. This can take from 5 to 15 minutes, and is a potentially hazardous time. Like landing an airplane, you need the patient to arrive at consciousness smoothly, without disruption in the vital signs. Most importantly you need him to be breathing safely through his newly remodeled face and airway.

1140 hours—The patient opens his eyes. You remove the ETT and place the oxygen facemask back over his nose and mouth. Once you’ve confirmed that he’s ventilating himself safely, you call for the gurney again. Together with the orderlies, the nurse, and the surgeon, you slide the patient back over to the gurney, and begin to transport him out of the operating room.

Post Anesthesia Care Unit

1145 hours—You push the gurney into the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), and into a parking berth staffed by a different registered nurse and another battery of vital signs monitors. You and the nurse connect the patient to the same monitors you used in the operating room, and document that the vital signs within safe limits. Then you give the nurse a verbal report of the patient’s preoperative medical problems and the pertinent surgical and anesthetic details. You proceed to the charting room, where you log into the EMR again and finish documenting all the data from the anesthetic. Throughout the time the patient is recovering in the PACU, the nurse follows medical orders you’ve written, and you’re responsible for the patient’s safety and well-being. The PACU nurse will call you for any questions or problems.

1155 hours—You find lunch somewhere. At my hospital there is no doctor’s cafeteria, and there is insufficient time to wait in line at the regular cafeteria. You may bring a sandwich from home, or you may subsist on protein bars, a bagel, a banana, or some yogurt you find in the operating room lounge. For anesthesiologists, the interval between surgeries is a time when the surgeons, nurses, and the empty operating room are waiting for you to get things going again. No surgery can proceed without anesthesia, so your between-case time is to be minimized. In some models of anesthesia care, a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) may break you out during the anesthetic or between cases, but when there is 100% physician anesthesia staffing, everyone is waiting for you between cases to get the next patient asleep.

1225 hours—You meet your second patient and go through the steps outlined beginning at 0700 hours above once again.

Depending on the length of your anesthetic list, you may be finished by 1400 hours (a 7-hour day), or you may be finished at 1700 hours (a 10-hour day), or if you are on-call you may work all night, until 0700 the next morning. The good news is that your pay is proportional to the duration of time and the number and complexity of the cases you do. When you are on overnight call as an anesthesiologist, you will usually have the next day entirely off.

Ambulatory Surgery Center

On certain days you may work at an outpatient ambulatory surgery center (ASC) instead of at a hospital. At an ASC the surgical procedures are simpler, and medical problems are screened beforehand so that no sick patients are allowed. Many ASCs have no EMR, and the charting is done by writing on paper with a ballpoint pen, which is less time-consuming than the current sluggish and expensive EMR systems used at hospitals. During an ASC day you may do one 8-hour anesthetic, or you may do eight 1-hour anesthetics. An ASC often provides food for their staff and their doctors, and you will be finished at a reasonable and predictable time, usually between noon and 1700 hours.

How are your emotions during your day as an anesthesiologist? It depends on how experienced you are. Even veteran anesthesiologists are on edge during the induction of anesthesia and the placement of breathing tubes. The maintenance phase of anesthesia, during the middle of the surgery, is predictably stable most of the time. Are you bored during this time period? Not likely, as there is enough going on with the surgical procedure, its effects on the patient’s physiology, and the pharmacology you are commanding. The end of each surgery increases the vigilance and anxiety level of the anesthesiologist once again until the patient is safely transferred to the PACU. Some cases are more stressful than others. Emergency surgeries, patients at the extremes of age (very young or very old), trauma surgeries, cardiac surgeries, lung surgeries, and neurosurgeries are among the most stressful. Anesthesiologists who practice these subspecialties are often adrenaline junkies themselves, and enjoy the challenge of more difficult cases.

After your work day you’ll drive home and enjoy a free evening. You typically won’t have any phone calls regarding the day’s patients. Once a patient leaves the PACU without complications, it’s unlikely there will be ongoing any issues for the anesthesiologist. For these reasons, anesthesiology is often considered a “quality lifestyle” medical specialty. I’d agree. Your evenings and weekends are usually free unless you are on call, which makes anesthesiology appealing. 

On each work evening you’ll receive your list for the following day’s cases. In our practice, we telephone each patient the night before to go over essential questions. Hopefully then you can go to sleep when you please. In my career I’ve had quite a few nights where the next day’s difficult cases gave me cause for concern or worry. Concerns and worries can lead to insomnia, a not-uncommon stressor for a practicing anesthesiologist. You might be worrying about a re-do heart valve replacement anesthetic on an 80-year-old woman, a throat surgery on a 340-pound man, or a list of 3-year-olds with obstructive sleep apnea who are having tonsillectomies. 

A career in anesthesia is not for the faint at heart. Mistakes or complications in our specialty can lead to bad outcomes in a matter of minutes. That said, a career in anesthesia is a fascinating and complex lifetime passion, during which you can help tens of thousands of patients undergo surgery safely.

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popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
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READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

THE TEN MOST SIGNIFICANT ADVANCES IN ANESTHESIOLOGY IN THE PAST DECADE

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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What were the ten most significant advances in anesthesiology in the past decade, 2010 – 2020? Here are my picks:

  • Sugammadex. Sugammadex was FDA-approved in December 2015, and the practice of chemically paralyzing surgical patients and reversing their paralysis has been forever changed. For my non-medical readers, sugammadex is an intravenous drug which reverses the paralysis of rocuronium, the most commonly used anesthetic paralytic drug, in approximately one minute. Sugammadex replaced the decades-old practice of injecting a combination of neostigmine and glycopyrrolate to reverse paralysis. Neostigmine and glycopyrrolate were slow to act (a wait of up to nine minutes), and could not reverse paralysis if zero twitches were present on a nerve stimulator monitor. In addition, 16 mg/kg of sugammadex IV can reverse an intubating dose of rocuronium, which makes rocuronium more quickly reversible than succinylcholine for rapid sequence intubation. Sugammadex is not cheap (a cost of $100 per 200 mg vial), but since the availability of sugammadex, no anesthesia practitioner should ever have an awake and still-paralyzed patient at the conclusion of an anesthetic. A terrific advance. Five stars.
  • Use of Zoom. In the era of COVID, Zoom videoconferencing made person-to-person communication involving anesthesiologists possible. During the early days of the COVID outbreak, the American Society of Anesthesiologists was able to keep its members informed and educated via Zoom conferencing. At the present time, almost all anesthesia continuing medical education (CME) is conducted effectively via Zoom. I attend the Stanford anesthesia Grand Rounds each Monday morning via Zoom, and the educational value is as high as it was when I attended in person. Expect Zoom CME to continue as a major vector in the years to come. Although Zoom may adversely affect in-person attendance at medical meetings forever, I believe widespread videoconferencing education is a tremendous advance. Five stars.
  • The Stanford Anesthesia Emergency Manual. See this link.  The algorithms set out in the red laminated ring-bound Stanford Anesthesia Emergency Manual filled a fundamental need in acute care medicine. When perioperative emergencies arise, a delay in treatment can result in death or irreversible brain damage. The presence of this Stanford book of checklists assures that every operating room is equipped with the cognitive aids needed for standard of care treatment. The manual is available at https://emergencymanual.stanford.edu. The authors chose not to glean profits from the publication of the Stanford Emergency Manual, but instead made it available for physicians and nurses everywhere for free. Five stars.
  • Safer care. Anesthesia care has become safer and safer. Deaths and adverse outcomes continue to decrease because of improved monitoring, vigilance, education, and training. The Cleveland Clinic writes, “In the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t uncommon to have a death related to anesthesia in every one of every 10,000 or 20,000 patients. Now it’s more like one in every 200,000 patients—it’s very rare.” The continuing advances in anesthesia safety are a bellwether for other specialties, who must envy the progress made in anesthesiology quality assurance. The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation is a hub of all advances. Five stars.
  • Pubmed/Internet/the Cloud. This past decade saw an explosion of handheld mobile devices and phones, as well as an expansion in the use of the cloud and the internet. Anesthesiology benefited from these technological advances. Information regarding anesthesia care is immediately available to any anesthesia provider anywhere in the world, if they have internet access. The ability to do a Google search on any topic is outstanding and immediate. Pubmed is a National Library of Medicine website which catalogs an abstract on every medical publication. Pubmed is an essential tool for every physician who is investigating previously published medical knowledge. Five stars.
  • Closed loop TIVA (total intravenous anesthesia).  Anesthesiologists and pharmacologists have been working on the pharmacokinetics of automated administration of intravenous anesthetics for years. Utilizing EEG monitoring data (BIS monitor levels) to titrate the depth of anesthesia shows promise. For a typical anesthetic, TIVA requires more work than vapor anesthesia with sevoflurane, because the anesthesiologist must load a syringe with propofol and/or remifentanil, attach an infusion line, load the syringe into the infusion pump, and program the pump to the correct infusion rate. In contrast, a sevoflurane vaporizer is already loaded with liquid anesthetic, is easy to use, and merely requires the pushing of one button and turning of one dial. Closed loop TIVA is not in clinical use at this time, but you can expect that the future, anesthesia recipes will include automated sedation/anesthetic depth titration via computer administration. The TIVA research of the past ten years has paved the way for this advance. Three stars.

The ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia boom. In the past ten years the number of ultrasound guided regional anesthesia blocks has mushroomed. Regional nerve blocks decrease the need for postoperative narcotics. Evidence shows that ultrasound guidance reduces the incidence of vascular injury, local anesthetic systemic toxicity, pneumothorax and phrenic nerve block for interscalene blocks, but there has not been consistent evidence that ultrasound guidance is associated with a reduced incidence of nerve injury. The ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia boom has led to tens of thousands of additional nerve blocks, and an unfortunate fact is that a small but non-zero number of these patients develop permanent nerve damage in their arms or legs after their blocks. Regional anesthesia specialists who publish in the medical literature have made little effort to quantify or report these complications. Prospective data on nerve injuries is needed. Honest verbal informed consent to each patient before a nerve block is needed. See this link. Three stars.

Point of care ultrasound (POCUS). In recent years, anesthesiologists began to aim their ultrasound probes at the abdomen, thorax, and airway, to gain real-time information and immediate knowledge of the anatomy and pathology beneath the skin and to better manage and treat critically ill patients. POCUS is proving useful in trauma , chest examination, and pediatric anesthesia. Because POCUS is a recent development, the majority of anesthesiologists do not have the training, skills, or knowledge needed to use this new technique. Recent graduates of residency and fellowship programs will lead the way as the anesthesia workforce transitions toward mastery of POCUS. Three stars.

  • ASA Monitor/Dr. Steven Shafer. I list this development last, but my enthusiasm for the ASA Monitor and its Editor-in-Chief Steven Shafer is extremely high. The American Society of Anesthesiologists revamped their ASA Monitor publication into a monthly newsletter reporting up-to-date information regarding our specialty. The ASA hired Steven Shafer MD PhD as the editor. Dr. Shafer is a Professor of Anesthesiology at Stanford, and is an outstanding scientist, author, and humorist. I’ve known Steve for nearly forty years, since he was a medical student. He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in the field of anesthesiology, and was the Editor-in-Chief for Anesthesia and Analgesia from 2006-2016. Dr. Shafer possesses a razor-sharp intellect and a flippant sense of humor seldom seen in scientific writing. His lead editorial in each month’s issue of the ASA Monitor is required reading for every anesthesia professional. Dr. Shafer also personally authors a daily update on COVID research and statistics—a Google group which you can personally subscribe to as an email offering. See this link. Five stars.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
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How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
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The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
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Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
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READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

HOW DO PANDEMICS END? EXAMINING THE 1918 SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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How do pandemics end? Now that COVID-19 vaccines have been approved, we’re all hoping this is the beginning of the end of this coronavirus pandemic. What about a history lesson—how did the last large respiratory viral pandemic end? The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people, and was the third worst pandemic in the past 1000 years. (Number one was the bubonic plague/Black Death in the 1300s which killed 75 to 200 million people, up to 70% of Europe’s population.1 Number two is the HIV/AIDS pandemic which has killed 32 million people from 1981 to the present.2) How did the Spanish flu pandemic end? There was no vaccine technology in 1918. There were no intensive care units, there were no ventilators, and there wasn’t even a microscope powerful enough to see or identify the virus. There were no anti-viral drugs such as remdesivir or Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies, and there were no antibiotics to treat the bacterial pneumonias that developed as complications of the flu. When people got a severe case of the Spanish flu, they died. 

H1N1 influenza virus

Novel coronavirus

The difference between the 1918 pandemic and the 2020 pandemic is the fact that the Spanish flu was an influenza virus, and COVID is caused by a novel coronavirus. Both are respiratory viruses, but influenza and coronavirus are two very different entities. Influenza is a seasonal infection which usually runs from autumn until spring. In a typical year, 200,000 Americans are hospitalized for flu-related complications. Over the past thirty years there have been between 3,000 to 49,000 influenza-related U.S. deaths every year. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was caused by an H1N1 influenza virus A. It lasted from 1918 to 1920, and infected 500 million people, more than one-third of the world’s population. REF https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm  ). The pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people, including 675,000 in the United States. The pandemic occurred during World War I. The press in the United States and much of Europe censored early death tallies from the disease to minimize global panic. Spain was a neutral country in the war, and their newspapers were free to report on the disease, especially since their King Alfonso XIII  contracted the disease. Early stories from Spain created the impression that Spain was hard hit by the disease, and because of this the pandemic was named “Spanish flu.” 

The first wave of the Spanish flu began in the spring of 1918. The second wave began in August, and was more lethal than the first wave. In the United States the peak number of deaths were reported between September and December of 1918.  Infected individuals experienced typical flu symptoms such as sore throat, headache and fever. In January 1919 a third wave of the Spanish flu spread in Europe. The troop deployments and trench warfare of World War I facilitated disease transmission. Death was often caused by bacterial pneumonia  due to common upper respiratory-tract bacteria which invaded the lungs by infecting the viral-damaged airway cells.

Ninety-nine percent of Spanish flu deaths in the United States occurred in people younger than age 65, and fifty percent of the deaths were in young adults 20 to 40 years old. As in the COVID-19 pandemic, the entertainment and service industries suffered heavy economic losses. Public policy on curbing the spread of the Spanish flu was similar to the advice offered in the COVID pandemic: social distancing and masks-earing were encouraged. Frequent hand-washing, quarantining of patients, and closure of schools, public spaces and non-essential businesses were all utilized to minimize the spread of the disease.

How did the Spanish flu pandemic end? Individuals who were infected either died of influenza or survived and developed immunity. In the middle of 1920, the Spanish flu faded away enough on its own so that the pandemic ended.

Let’s compare this to the current novel coronavirus pandemic. As of this week there have been 300,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States and 1.7 million deaths worldwide. So far less than 1 percent (74 million infected/7.8 billion total world population = .0095) of the world’s population is known to have been infected with the novel coronavirus. While the Spanish flu eventually faded away, as annual seasonal influenza usually fades away, the novel coronavirus has so far showed no signs of weakening. We are nowhere near herd immunity. Herd immunity is defined as “when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.”  

Doctors don’t expect the current COVID-19 pandemic to end until a significant percentage of the world’s population is vaccinated. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, “Let’s say we get 75 percent, 80 percent of the population vaccinated. If we do that, if we do it efficiently enough over the second quarter of 2021, by the time we get to the end of the summer, i.e., the third quarter, we may actually have enough herd immunity protecting our society that . . . we can approach very much some degree of normality that is close to where we were before.”

Between twenty and forty percent of Americans say they will not take the COVID vaccine. This is a high number, and it strikes me as lunacy. The health consequences of you, your family members, or your friends developing a severe case of COVID-19 are well documented. Both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines showed minimal side effects in their clinical trials. Be smart. Get vaccinated as soon as you can. Herd immunity to the COVID-19 virus will only develop if we vaccinate the populace. Hopefully vaccine-induced immunity will curb the COVID-19 pandemic so the world can once again return to the lifestyles and freedoms we enjoyed in 2019.

For further information regarding influenza pandemics, I recommend The History Of Influenza Pandemics By The Numbers.

References:

  1. Austin Alchon, Suzanne (2003). A pest in the land: new world epidemics in a global perspective. University of New Mexico Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8263-2871-7. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2016-04-22.
  2. “UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic 2010”. UNAIDS. UNAIDS. 2010. Retrieved 5 September 2020.


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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

READ ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

SUFFOCATING ALONE

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Dr. Shirlee Xie, Minneapolis

This week Dr. Shirlee Xie, Associate Director of Hospital Medicine at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, Minnesota, taped an interview in which she described her personal experiences caring for COVID inpatients. I encourage you to watch the video on this link. Dr. Xie was highly emotional as she made the following remarks regarding COVID: (beginning at 2:53 of the video)

“I don’t think that people can really comprehend how horrific this disease is, unless they’ve been personally touched by it. I mean, people are literately suffocating inside our hospitals, and they are dying alone. And truly, my heart breaks for everybody who has lost their jobs or their housing, and for kids that aren’t able to go to school, and for people that aren’t able to see their families. And they don’t get the luxury to complain about COVID fatigue, and their families don’t get the luxury to complain about it, because they’re living in, like, COVID hell.”

I’d like to emphasize two words that Dr. Xie chose: suffocating and alone.

We’re all going to die someday. There are terrible ways to exit this life, and there are dignified, tranquil exits. 

As a physician, regarding end of life matters I prefer to see people die without pain and without suffering. Gasping for your next breath is a terrible way to exit this world. I place breathing tubes for a living, and I’ve seen patients gasping for their last breaths in emergency rooms, intensive care units, and other hospital settings. These patients are terrified and panicked. It’s an awful way to die. When I was in college and medical school I smoked Marlboros and enjoyed every puff. When I began my internal medicine residency I worked at the Palo Alto VA hospital, where I first saw veterans dying of emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Many World War II veterans smoked from the 1940s until the 1080s, and had destroyed their lungs. At their baselines they were unable to walk up one flight of stairs. When one of these patients acquired a respiratory viral infection, they would become acutely ill and need to be admitted to the hospital. These patients were gasping for breath and had to be supported in the ICU on ventilators. Being a patient on a ventilator is an ordeal. When you have a breathing tube in your windpipe, you can no longer talk. When you have a breathing tube in your windpipe, the stimulus of that plastic in your trachea is extreme (your reflex is to cough hard and reject the plastic tube from your airway). When you have a breathing tube in your windpipe, you need to be sedated so that you don’t panic, cough, buck, or pull the tube out of your body. After I’d seen a dozen formerly brave soldiers on ventilators, I quit smoking cigarettes for good. I hope never to die that way—sucking for my last breath.

In the intensive care unit, intubated and ventilated
In the intensive care unit, on a ventilator

When it’s time to die, most of us hope to die with someone we love near us at the bedside. I’ve stood witness to hospice deaths, where family members surround the bed as their loved one drifts off to sleep under the cloak of narcotic sedation and breaths their last. This is a calm, honorable death. No one wants to die alone, staring up at some white ceiling with an array of fluorescent lights as our last image of this world. No one wants to die alone, listening to ICU alarm bells chiming instead of the sound of our spouse’s voice or our children’s voices. Because of social distancing, family members and loved ones are not allowed inside hospital intensive care units during this time of COVID. When you’re dying of COVID, you’re alone, and you may never see the people you love ever again.

Hospice

Listen to what Doctor Xie says about COVID deaths. Suffocating alone. No one wants to die a premature COVID death. As doctors, we are well aware that the economic downturn of the COVID pandemic is affecting millions of people. An economic downturn such as this is awful. Hopefully Congress will seek to soften the hardship for those without jobs or housing. 

But when you’re dead, you’re dead. You don’t want “COVID hell.” You don’t want to die a COVID death. You don’t want your loved ones to die a COVID death. You don’t want your friends to die a COVID death. You don’t even want people you don’t like to die a COVID death.

Hang in there for a few more months. Do what the CDC and Dr. Fauci advocate: Socially distance, wear masks, and stay home as much as possible unless you’re exercising outside with social distance. 

Vaccines are on their way. This is just one year of our lives. Long lives, we hope. 

Without suffocating alone.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

WHAT ANESTHESIOLOGISTS DO… AN EXAMPLE ANESTHETIC

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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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. At Stanford University we’re called the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. “Perioperative” means “around the time of operations.” Today I’ll walk you through an example anesthetic which shows how an anesthesiologist approaches the challenges of a difficult surgical problem: emergency non-cardiac surgery in a patient with heart disease.

John Doe is a 58-year-old man with an acute inflammation of his gallbladder (acute cholecystitis), who needs to have his gallbladder removed (cholecystectomy). For the past 24 hours, Mr. Doe has suffered fever and acute right upper quadrant abdominal pain. His general surgeon advises surgery as soon as possible. Mr. Doe’s past medical history is positive for obesity (six feet tall, 240 pounds, BMI=32.5), coronary artery disease, and a history of stable angina.

PREOPERATIVE WORK: Anesthesiologist Dr. A reviews the chart and learns that Mr. Doe has had chest pain (angina) with exercise for the past two years. His cardiologist dida heart catheterization one year ago and discovered that Mr. Doe has small vessel coronary artery narrowing. His narrowed  vessels were too small to treat with coronary stents, and Mr. Doe received only medical therapy for his angina, in the form of isosorbide nitrate pills, diltiazem (calcium channel blocker pills), and nitroglycerin tablets as needed for chest pain. 

Mr. Doe takes a nitroglycerin tablet about once a week. This medical regimen has been effective in avoiding unstable angina and preventing heart attacks. Mr. Doe also takes atorvastatin (Lipitor) to control his hypercholesterolemia. Dr. A speaks with the cardiologist and asks two questions: “Are there any other diagnostic tests needed before surgery, and are there any other therapeutic measures needed before surgery?” The cardiologist answers that a preoperative echocardiogram is indicated, and he orders the test. The echocardiogram shows Mr. Doe’s heart is contracting normally (ejecting 60% of its volume with every beat). The cardiologist also measures the patient’s blood troponin level. Troponin levels are elevated when a patient is having an acute heart attack. Mr. Doe’s troponin levels are within normal limits, therefore no heart damage has occurred so far. Regarding therapeutic intervention, the cardiologist advises a continuous infusion of nitroglycerin to help prevent cardiac ischemia/heart attack damage during the anesthetic. 

An anesthesia machine, with the vital signs monitor screen on the left, and the electronic medical records computer screen on the right.

Dr. A meets Mr. Doe and interviews him. Mr. Doe is currently having moderately severe abdominal pain, nausea, fever, and chills. He has not had any chest pain for the past two weeks, and has no shortness of breath. His vital signs are heart rate = 100, BP = 150/80, respiratory rate =  20 breaths/minute, oxygen saturation 95% on room air, and temperature 100.2 degrees. Dr. A examines the patient and finds that the airway looks normal, the lungs are clear, the heart sounds are normal, and the abdomen is tender over the area of the gallbladder. Dr. A explains the general anesthetic plan to Mr. Doe, and informs the patient that his risk of heart complications for this acute surgery is higher than average because of the past cardiac history. Dr. A then records all pertinent preoperative information into the electronic medical record (EMR) via a computer keyboard and screen located just to the right of his anesthesia machine.

IN THE OPERATING ROOM: Mr. Doe will be asleep for the surgery, and Dr. A will be present the entire time. Mr. Doe has a preexisting intravenous (IV) line in his left arm. Prior to the surgery, Dr. A sedates the patient with 2 milligrams of IV midazolam (Versed) a benzodiazepine anxiety-reducing drug, and 100 micrograms of IV fentanyl, a narcotic.  

He then inserts a second catheter into the patient’s radial artery in its location at the right wrist. (I’ll use the male pronoun “he” for Dr. A in this example case, but be aware that as of 2017, 40% of anesthesiologists under the age of 36 years are female. This arterial line is connected to an electronic monitor which shows the blood pressure wave and blood pressure value continuously throughout the anesthetic. Dr. A places five ECG monitoring stickers on the patient’s chest, and a pulse oximeter on the third finger of the patient’s right hand. Dr. A notes the pre-anesthetic vital signs are heart rate = 80 beats/minute, blood pressure (BP) = 130/80, and oxygen saturation = 96% on room air, increasing to 100% on mask oxygen. This data is automatically entered into the chart of the electronic medical record.

MONITORING SCREEN with vs

After the patient breathes oxygen via a mask for two minutes, Dr. A performs a rapid sequence induction of anesthesia by injecting propofol (a hypnotic sleep drug) and succinylcholine (a muscle paralyzing drug) into the IV. The operating room nurse presses down on Mr. Doe’s cricoid cartilage in his neck, to compress the esophagus and prevent any stomach contents from regurgitating upward into the airway. 

Ten seconds after the propofol injection the patient is asleep. Forty seconds after the succinylcholine injection the patient is paralyzed. At this time Dr. A inserts a laryngoscope into the patient’s mouth and visualizes the patient’s vocal cords and the opening into the larynx or windpipe.

Under direct vision, Dr. A inserts a hollow plastic endotracheal tube (ET tube) into the patient’s windpipe, and then withdraws the laryngoscope. The cuff on the distal end of the ET tube is located just below the vocal cords, and Dr. A injects 3 milliliters of air into the cuff to inflate it and to secure the tube with a seal at the level of the windpipe. 

Dr. A then uses his anesthesia machine apparatus to squeeze breaths through the ET tube into the lungs, and listens to both sides of Mr. Doe’s chest with a stethoscope to document that breath sounds are present in both lungs. Dr. A glances at his anesthesia monitoring screen, which includes a row for the carbon dioxide detected in the exhaled breathing gas. The monitor screen traces a square wave vs. time, indicating that the ventilation of carbon dioxide (CO2) is now occurring out of the lungs with each ventilation. 

Dr. A secures the ET tube to the upper lip with adhesive tape, so the critical breathing tube cannot dislodge during the surgery. He sets the ventilator to deliver a volume of 800 milliliters into the lungs, nine times every minute. He sets the mixture of the inhaled gas as 50% oxygen and 50% air, with a resultant oxygen concentration of 60% oxygen. Dr. A turns on the sevoflurane vaporizer at this point, which releases a 1.5% concentration of sevoflurane vapor into the breathing mixture. 

Sevoflurane vaporizer (see yellow knob) on anesthesia machine

Sevoflurane, a potent inhaled general anesthetic drug, travels from the lungs via the blood stream to the patient’s brain, where sevoflurane molecules move from the bloodstream into the brain. This continuous delivery of sevoflurane molecules to the brain assures both sleep and amnesia. Dr. A injects an IV dose of 40 milligrams of rocuronium, a second paralyzing drug which will keep the patient motionless for approximately 30-40 minutes.

Dr. A prepares to start a central intravenous line into the right internal jugular vein. He preps the right side of the patient’s neck with Betadine iodine soap, and drapes the right neck with sterile towels. He places a probe on the patient’s neck from a device called an ultrasound machine. The ultrasound machine bounces soundwaves off the contents inside the neck, and generates a two-dimensional black and white image of the veins, arteries, muscles, and nerves found there. 

Dr. A inserts a needle into the right jugular vein under ultrasound visualization, and then inserts a wire through the needle into the lumen (center) of the vein. Seconds later, Dr. A slides a hollow intravenous catheter over the wire 14 centimeters into the center of the right internal jugular vein. 

Dr. A removes the wire and connects an intravenous drip to the central line catheter. He then connects a preprepared drip of nitroglycerin to a stopcock located on the central line IV, and turns on a preprogramed machine which infuses a small amount of nitroglycerin into the patient’s internal jugular vein continuously.

Dr. A steps back and surveys the patient’s vital signs. The BP is 100/50. The BP machine’s computer calculates a mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) as ((2 X diastolic BP) + systolic BP)/all divided by 3. The mean arterial pressure is thus ((2 X 100) + 50)/divided by 3 = 250/3, or 83. 

The desired range of the mean arterial pressure for this case will be from 65-90, and it will be Dr. A’s job to control the blood pressure within this range. The pulse rate is 60 beats per minute, and it will be Dr. A’s job is to keep the pulse rate from getting too high or too low (60 – 80 beats per minute is a desired goal). The oxygen saturation is 100%, and it will be Dr. A’s job is to keep the oxygen saturation, or O2sat, between 90-100%.

Dr. A administers an IV dose of an intravenous antibiotic prior to the surgical incision, and also administers two IV antinausea drugs, ondansetron (Zofran) and metoclopropamide (Reglan) prophylactically. He tapes the patient’s eyes shut so the corneas will not dry out and become scratched at any time during the surgery. 

Dr. A inserts an oral gastric tube through the mouth into the patient’s stomach, and suctions out any stomach contents. He inserts a temperature probe into the patient’s nose and connects it to a temperature monitor. He assists the nurses in positioning and padding the patient’s arms adjacent to the sides of his abdomen. He then wraps a plastic Bair Hugger blanket over the patient’s upper chest and head, and connects a Bair Hugger device which blows heated air through the bag to warm the patient if necessary during the anesthetic. 

The patient is now ready for the surgery to begin.

A nurse preps the abdomen by painting the skin with an antiseptic solution. The scrub technician and the surgeon drape sterile paper barriers over the perimeter of the abdomen, as well as a sterile paper vertical barrier (ether screen) between the anesthesiologist and the abdominal surgical site. 

The surgeon calls for a Time Out, at which time the operating room personnel review the patient’s name, the planned surgery, the patient’s allergies, and the estimated time for the surgery. Once the Time Out has been accepted, the surgeon begins the surgery. Almost all gallbladder excisions are done through a laparoscopic approach without opening the abdomen. The surgeon inserts a sharp trocar into the abdomen, removes the central core of this device, and then inflates carbon dioxide gas through the device into the interior of the abdomen. 

Once the interior of the abdomen is expanded like a balloon, an instrument with a camera on its tip is inserted into the abdomen, and the two-dimensional image of the interior of the abdomen is viewed on multiple video screens. The surgeon makes multiple small incisions and inserts additional surgical tools inside the abdomen.

The stimulus of the surgical incisions causes the blood pressure to increase. The mean arterial pressure (MAP) rises from 70 to 95. Dr. A deepens the anesthetic by injecting an additional two milliliters (100 micrograms) of IV fentanyl, which returns the MAP to 80 within two minutes. The insufflation of the abdomen with carbon dioxide is stimulating as well, because is stretches the lining of the abdomen (the peritoneum), and the MAP rises to 95 again. 

This time Dr. A increases the infusion rate of the nitroglycerin drip. Nitroglycerin dilates the venous blood vessels in the body which lowers the blood pressure, and also dilates the coronary arteries. He also begins a constant infusion of propofol via an intravenous pump to deepen the anesthetic level and lower the blood pressure further. The MAP decreases to 80 once again.

The surgeon requests the operating room table be tilted so the patient’s head is higher than the feet, and the right side of the patient’s body is higher than the left. Dr. A accomplishes this positioning by pushing buttons on the table controls. 

The purpose of this positioning is for gravity to move the intestines and abdominal contents downward toward the patient’s feet and toward the left side, thereby clearing the view of the gallbladder area in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen. 

There are hemodynamic (blood pressure and heart rate) consequences to this change in positioning. The MAP drops to 55 and the heart rate drops to 55. Dr. A treats the heart rate drop with an IV injection of atropine, an anticholinergic medication which blocks slow heart rates, and the pulse rate climbs back to 65. He chooses to treat the low MAP by injecting a small amount (5 milligrams) of a medication called ephedrine, which acts to increase both blood pressure and heart rate. The MAP returns to 70.

There is minimal bleeding during the gallbladder resection, and the experienced surgeon completes the surgery in 45 minutes. During this time Dr. A continues the maintenance anesthesia of sevoflurane and propofol, and injects further doses of the paralyzing drug rocuronium 20 milligrams (to keep the patient paralyzed ) and the narcotic fentanyl 100 micrograms (to provide ongoing pain relief).

As the surgeons close the final incisions, Dr. A removes the oral gastric tube and weans off the anesthesia drugs. The propofol infusion is discontinued. The sevoflurane is discontinued. The operating room table is returned to a level position. The rocuronium paralysis is reversed by the IV injection of a medication called sugammadex. As the anesthesia lightens, a predictable increase in blood pressure and pulse rate occurs, as the patient’s body begins to sense the stimulation of the breathing tube within the trachea and the sensation of the completed surgical repair. Once the patient is awake enough to breathe on his own, Dr. A removes the ET tube and places an oxygen mask over the patient’s nose and mouth. 

All critical care medicine is an effort to maintain Airway-Breathing-Circulation, in that order. Dr. A confirms that the patient’s airway is open in the absence of the ET tube, and that the patient is breathing adequately. 

Dr. A rechecks the vital signs and sees that the oxygen saturation is 98%, the pulse rate is 110, and the MAP is 110. The elevated pulse rate and blood pressure are dangerous in terms of this patient’s known coronary artery disease. The elevated high heart rate increases the cardiac oxygen consumption and lowers the time for the coronary arteries to fill between beats. The elevated blood pressure also increases the cardiac oxygen consumption, and puts the patient at a higher risk for heart damage or a heart attack. Dr. A treats both the elevated heart rate and blood pressure by injecting 10 milligrams of labetalol (an intravenous beta-blocker drug) which lowers the heart rate to 90 and lowers the MAP to 90 within two minutes. A second dose of IV labetalol brings the heart rate to 70 and the MAP to 80 within another two minutes. At this point Dr. A is satisfied that the patient is stable, and the staff prepares to transfer the patient to the post anesthesia care unit (PACU). A hospital bed is stationed to the side of the operating room table, and the monitors are disconnected from the patient. 

The orderlies, nurses, and doctors slide a roller device under the patient, and on the count of three they roll the patient onto the hospital bed. Dr. A secures an oxygen mask over the patient’s face, elevates the patient’s head to 30 degrees, and makes sure the IV line, the arterial line, and the internal jugular line tubings are all intact and not tangled for the transfer to the PACU. The baseline infusion of the nitroglycerin is continued throughout, as the cardiologist requested.

POSTANESTHESIA:  In the PACU, nurses reconnect the patient to the same monitoring devices worn during the anesthetic. A registered nurse personally attends to the patient in the PACU. The anesthesiologist writes all the orders for pain medications, cardiac medications, and anti-nausea medications.

The patient will stay in the PACU for approximately one hour, before he is transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) for continued observation of his vital signs, cardiac condition, and for ongoing administration of the IV nitroglycerin. Once the patient is transferred to the ICU, Dr. A contacts both the ICU team and the cardiologist and signs off responsibility for the patient to them. In the ICU the cardiologist orders troponin levels once again, to determine whether or not the patient suffered a heart attack during surgery. The troponin levels are found to be low, indicating no heart damage occurred. The patient wakes up in a satisfactory status, with resolution of his abdominal pain. His vital signs remain normal.

Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU)

On the next day the patient’s nitroglycerin infusion is discontinued, his oxygen therapy is discontinued, and he’s discharged to a post-surgical ward bed. On the following day he’s discharged home.

This describes what an anesthesiologist does in performing a moderately difficult anesthetic. This model case is not unique to a university hospital—it could occur as described in any community hospital near you. Gallbladder surgery is not without risks, and not all gallbladder surgeries end well. In 5-10% of laparoscopic gallbladder surgeries, technical difficulties with the anatomy require the surgeon to switch to an open surgical method which requires a larger incision, and results in more postoperative pain. 

Open gallbladder surgery incision

As in any intraabdominal surgery, gallbladder surgery can lead to surgical complications such as:

  • Infection
  • Bleeding
  • Swelling
  • Bile leakage
  • Damage to the bile duct
  • Damage to the intestine, bowel, or blood vessels

Laparoscopic gallbladder surgery can lead to postoperative medical complications such as heart attacks, sepsis, pneumonia, pulmonary embolus (blood clot to the lungs), or rarely death. In 1987 pop icon Andy Warhol, age 58,  died just hours after gallbladder surgery in a prominent New York City hospital.  

No one ever disclosed what went wrong in Mr. Warhol’s case, but the anesthesia challenges for that surgery would have been similar to what was outlined above. 

This is what an anesthesiologist does. Your physician anesthesiologist is much more than a “sandman” or a “gas man.” Your physician anesthesiologist is your protector when you lose consciousness and go under the knife. While your surgeon attends to the surgical repair, your anesthesiologist will attend to your heart, brain, lungs, and the rest of your body . . .  before, during, and after your surgery.

Additional information on the profession of anesthesiology is available at the American Society of Anesthesiologists website.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

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WHY IS THERE AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S WALTER REED MEDICAL TEAM?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Why is there an anesthesiologist on President Trump’s Walter Reed medical team? Why would the president need an anesthesiologist?

This morning Dr. Sean Conley, the White House Physician, introduced President Trump’s medical team of seven doctors. Dr. Conley spoke to the nation from the approach to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He introduced the team behind him with these words:

“Behind me are some of the members of the president’s medical team, whom I’d like to introduce. Dr. Sean Dooley, pulmonary critical care doctor. Brian Garibaldi, pulmonary critical care. Dr. Robert Browning, pulmonary critical care. Dr. Jason Blaylock, infectious disease. Dr. Wes Campbell, infectious disease. Dr. John Hodgson, anesthesia. Major Kurt Klein, Army Nurse. Commander Megan Nasworthy, Navy Nurse. Lieutenant Julianna Lavopa, Navy Nurse. Lieutenant Commander John Shea, clinical pharmacist. And not present with us are Lieutenant Beth Carter, Lt.. Maureen Meehan, both Navy nurses and Dr. Jesse Schonau, director Executive Medicine Program.”

The tally of these seven doctors reads:

3 Pulmonary and Critical Care doctors

2 Infectious Disease doctors

1 Anesthesiologist

1 Emergency Room doctor, (this is Dr. Conley, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, or D.O.)

Why an anesthesiologist? President Trump is diagnosed with COVIE-19. Details of his illness are few. We were told that as of today, Saturday, October 3rd 2020, President Trump has no fever, no trouble breathing, is not currently on oxygen therapy, and has an oxygen saturation of 96% (normal = 90-100%).

COVID-19 is an infectious disease, so it makes sense that two infectious disease doctors are attending to him.

COVID-19 most commonly causes serious illness by lung infection, so it makes sense that two pulmonary and critical care doctors are attending to him.

But why does President Trump need an anesthesiologist on his medical team at Walter Reed Medical Center?

The answer: Airway Management.

If a patient with COVID-19 becomes acutely ill and his respiratory status declines so much that he cannot keep a safe oxygenation level merely by breathing oxygen through a supplementary mask or an oxygen tent, then that patient needs to be placed on a ventilator.

Ventilators pump oxygen in and out of a patient’s lungs via a breathing tube placed in the patient’s windpipe (trachea). This is called an endotracheal tube, and every anesthesiologist places hundreds of these tubes each year. The placement of an endotracheal tube into a COVID-19 patient who is gasping for breath is an acute procedure which requires an expert. A general anesthetic drug and a paralytic drug would be injected into the patient’s intravenous line, and then an anesthesiologist (wearing a space suit of extensive personal protective gear) would use a device called a laryngoscope to place the tube into the trachea under direct vision of the patient’s voice box.

If you’re a patient and you begin gasping for breath because of respiratory failure secondary to COVID-19, you don’t want your anesthesiologist to be far away. That’s why there’s an anesthesiologist on President Trump’s current medical team. The next few days will be telling. The president may remain stable and have only minimal or mild illness, but there is a nonzero chance that he will decompensate and become acutely ill.

Placing an endotracheal tube into Donald Trump would probably be an uneventful task for an expert, but the president is overweight and he does have a thick neck. Patients whose airway looks like his can prove difficult for an anesthesiologist to intubate the trachea. The attending anesthesiologist would most likely use a video laryngoscope, which has a camera on the tip of the scope that is inserted into the patient’s throat. This technology allows the anesthesiologist to “see around the corner” into the patient’s larynx or voice box. The image of the patient’s airway appears on a video screen.

Regarding President Trump’s treatment to date: he has already been treated with Remdesivir, an antiviral therapy which is administered via an intravenous line. There is data that Remdesivir is effective in animals for COVID viral prophylaxis or immediately following viral inoculation.

 It appears he also received an antibody cocktail yesterday, REGN-COV2, developed by Regeneron. The development of this cocktail was described in the journal Science in August. 

No one knows how President Trump’s medical course will proceed. As a medical doctor, I can only wish him the best of health, the best of medical care, and the best medical outcome that is possible. I hope no anesthesiologist has to place a breathing tube.

Stay tuned in these interesting and difficult times.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

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THE TWO LAWS OF ANESTHESIA (ACCORDING TO SURGEONS)

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

There are Two Laws of Anesthesia, according to surgeon lore. They are:

  1. The patient must not move.
  2. The patient must wake up (when the surgery is over).

Surgeons work with physician anesthesiologists, with certified nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), or with an anesthesia care team that includes both physician anesthesiologists and CRNAs. Most surgeons’ comprehension of what anesthesiologists are doing is limited. Most surgery residencies have zero months of anesthesia training out of their sixty months of total residency. No matter who supplies the anesthesia services, to our surgical colleagues the critical requirements of anesthesia include 1. and 2. above. 

Period.

Physician anesthesiologists finish medical school and complete at a minimum four additional years of training. Surgeons finish medical school and complete at a minimum five additional years of training. There’s not much difference there. Anesthesiologists typically spend 90+% of their working hours in the operating room. A busy surgeon will spend 50% of their time in the operating room, and the other 50% in preoperative clinic, postoperative clinic, or rounding on patients in the hospital. Anesthesiologists win the tally for most operating room hours per week. Anesthesiologists take care of a patient’s heart, lungs, brain, and kidney function before, during, and after surgery. Surgeons perform a specific operation on one organ system, e.g. heart surgeons operate on the heart, orthopedic surgeons operate on a bone or a joint, and ear surgeons operate on ears.

Yet in all the surgical specialties, Two Laws describe the surgeons’ lofty expectations of anesthesia professionals:

  1. The patient must not move.
  2. The patient must wake up (when the surgery is over).

Physician anesthesiologists learn to perform anesthesia for all types of surgery, including cardiac, vascular, trauma, neurosurgery, pediatrics, eye, ear nose and throat, urology, and obstetrics. Physician anesthesiologists attend to patients of all ages, from newborns to centenarians. Physician anesthesiologists develop an extensive understanding of physiology as well as the pharmacology of hundreds of medications. Physician anesthesiologists regularly insert breathing tubes, venous catheters, arterial catheters, and stomach tubes, and inject regional anesthetic blocks into the spinal fluid, the epidural space, and learn nerve blocks of every major peripheral nerve.

Yet to our surgical colleagues, Two Laws describe an excellent anesthesiologist’s work:

  1. The patient must not move.
  2. The patient must wake up (when the surgery is over).

Let’s examine the Two Laws:

  1. The patient must not move. This Law is important because a surgeon must not be distracted by motion within the surgical field. If a patient coughs or bucks on the breathing tube, movement will occur. The surgeon must stop, sometimes for 60 seconds or more, while the anesthesiologist administers additional drugs to the patient. During these 60 seconds, it’s important that the surgeon sighs, crosses his or her arms, or otherwise expresses what a major inconvenience this loss of 60 seconds has been. Has a patient ever been harmed by an episode of brief movement? In the overwhelming majority of surgeries there is no harm whatsoever. In a perfect anesthesia world, patients will not move. But in the majority of anesthetics the patient is not chemically paralyzed, and it is possible for movement to occur. An overly deep level of anesthesia will help prevent movement, but has the adverse consequence of requiring a longer time to wake the patient at the end of the surgery. Which brings us to Law #2:
  2. The patient must wake up. When the surgeon finishes suturing the skin incision and  concludes the surgery, he or she will remove their gloves and gown and wait for the anesthesiologist to wake the patient. Modern anesthetics wear off quickly, and for most surgeries the duration of time from the end of surgery to the patient waking and talking is approximately 10 – 15 minutes. But these are minutes during which the surgeon must watch and wait. These are minutes during which the surgeon’s valuable time is ticking by, and seemingly wasted. In the overwhelming majority of surgeries, anesthesiologists successfully wake the patient and remove the breathing tube. At this time the surgeon can leave the operating room to meet with the patient’s family and discuss the successful operation. None of this could happen if the anesthesiologist was not competent with Law #2. 

If you’re a medical student considering a surgical specialty, it’s important you understand the Two Laws. If you become an anesthesiologist or a surgeon, you will be on one side or the other of the Two Laws. 

If you’re a patient, consider that it’s your surgeon’s job to cut and cure while it’s your anesthesiologist’s job to keep you from moving and to wake you up. Of course, your vigilant physician anesthesiologist will also assure that you’re safe, asleep, and unaware. Your vigilant physician anesthesiologist will also assure that you’re as stable and as healthy as possible after surgery. Trust your anesthesiologist  and realize that while these Two Laws come from the lips of surgeons, the genesis of the Two Laws perhaps occurred with a tongue in cheek. I’ve had excellent relationships with hundreds of surgeons over decades, and despite these Two Laws, the majority of surgeons are wonderful doctors and healers who are not condescending toward their anesthesia colleagues whatsoever.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

TOXIC MARIJUANA SYNDROME YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF: CANNABINOID HYPEREMESIS SYNDROME

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 2 Comments
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. Chances are you’ve never heard of it, but one of your patients, or someone you know, may develop this syndrome in the coming years. Cannabis use is common. According to The Washington Post, in 2017 more than half of American adults had tried marijuana at least once in their lives, and a total of 55 million Americans currently used the drug. This number approaches the total of 59 million cigarette smokers in America. Each year 2.6 million Americans become new cannabis users. The majority of marijuana users are male, earn under $50,000 a year, and lack a college degree. The 18–25 year old age group has the highest prevalence of marijuana use. 

Emesis is the medical word for vomiting. Hyperemesis means excessive vomiting. The number of people affected with Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome is estimated at about 2.7 million people in the United States per year. Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (CHS) presents as a triad of chronic cannabis use, cyclic episodes of nausea and vomiting, and frequent hot bathing. If the patient withholds the history of chronic cannabis use, it’s difficult to impossible to make the correct diagnosis. Despite months of cyclical symptoms and thousands of dollars of Emergency Room visits and lab tests, the syndrome may not be correctly diagnosed or treated.

Let’s look at a case study of CHS to learn how it may present, and why it is uncommonly recognized:

A 25-year-old male presents for a diagnostic upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. He has a three-month history of persistent nausea, vomiting, and weight loss. His laboratory tests and CT scans of his abdomen and chest are normal. He carries a presumptive diagnosis of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), and treatment with anti-acid drugs such as proton-pump inhibitors and H2-blockers have not improved the symptoms. The young man has been afraid to eat because of nausea and retching. He has been unable to work, and his sleep has been significantly impaired. He has lost weight from 150 pounds to his current weight of 135 pounds. On exam he appears well. His vital signs are normal, and his abdominal exam is negative for tenderness. He is scheduled for general anesthesia for the endoscopy procedure. He was referred for the upper GI endoscopy by his primary care doctor, and the gastroenterologist has yet to meet the patient.

Twenty minutes before his procedure, the anesthesiologist asks the patient if he takes any medicine or drugs. “Only the stomach pills my doctor prescribed,” he replies. “They aren’t working at all. I also use marijuana to decrease the nausea, but it’s not working either.”

“How frequently do you use marijuana?” the anesthesiologist asks. 

“Promise not to tell my parents?” he says. “I use a vape pen about 8 – 10 times a day.” 

“For how long have you been doing that?”

“About five years. I’ve increased my use over the past few months, because it’s supposed to be helpful for nausea, but it’s not working anymore.”

The anesthesiologist excuses himself, and sets off to find the gastroenterologist scheduled to do the procedure.  The anesthesiologist shares the cannabis history, and the gastroenterologist immediately says, “No one ever told me this patient was a chronic marijuana user. This changes everything. His history is classic for Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome.”

The gastroenterologist interviews the patient and confirms the correct clinical diagnosis. The treatment is immediate cessation of marijuana use, and the endoscopy is cancelled.

One week after stopping all cannabis use, the patient’s symptoms have completely resolved. He is eating well without nausea or vomiting, and has gained back 8 pounds.

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome was first described in 2004 in a series of 9 patients from Australia.  In all of the cases, chronic cannabis abuse preceded the onset of a cyclical vomiting illness. Stopping cannabis led to cessation of the vomiting in seven cases. Three cases did not abstain and continued to have recurrent vomiting. Three other cases rechallenged themselves after a period of abstinence and relapsed to the same illness. Two of these cases abstained again, and remain well. The third case did not abstain, and remained ill. The majority of the patients displayed abnormal washing behavior during episodes of active nausea, in which they took repeated hot showers or baths, which temporarily relieved their symptoms.

Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the principle psychoactive compound in cannabis. There are two distinct cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2, in the human body, located predominately in the central nervous system and also in the gastrointestinal tract. THC stays in the body for a prolonged time, with an elimination plasma half-life of 20–30 hours. THC accumulates within body fat, and body fat serves as a long-term storage site. Typically THC can be used for its antiemetic (anti-nausea) property, and has been used to blunt nausea in cancer chemotherapy patients. With chronic use THC can induce a paradoxical nausea-inducing effect by unknown mechanisms on the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal system, causing the Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. Patients with Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome are chronic users of cannabis who likely have large lipid reservoir stores of THC. 

CHS patients are typically young adults with a long history of marijuana use. There is usually a delay of several years following the onset of the chronic marijuana habit before the onset of symptoms. CHS patients often remain misdiagnosed. Erroneous diagnoses considered included a broad range of conditions affecting the gastrointestinal tract. In one study the average duration of cannabis use prior to onset of the recurrent vomiting was 19.0 ± 3.4 years, and had an average of 7.1 ± 4.3 emergency room visits, 5.0 ± 2.7 clinic visits, and 3.1 ± 1.9 admissions for the CHS syndrome. Daily marijuana use was typical, often exceeding 3 – 5 times per day. 

The three phases of CHS are prodromal, hyperemetic, and recovery. In the prodromal phase patients develop early morning nausea, a fear of vomiting, and abdominal pain. The hyperemetic phase includes episodes of intense and persistent nausea and vomiting. Patients vomit profusely, and can vomit or retch multiple times per hour. In the original 2004 Australian study, 70% of patients reported weight loss of at least 5 kg (11 pounds). Symptomatic patients typically undergo extensive diagnostic work ups, including laboratory and imaging studies, which are all normal or nondiagnostic. The recovery phase can last for days, weeks, or months. It occurs after the cessation of cannabis consumption, and is associated with return to normal eating patterns and original body weight.

The diagnosis of CHS must be made entirely by clinical history. The history of extensive previous cannabis use is universal, but may be unrealized if the patient withholds the information for personal reasons. A Mayo Clinic study in 2012 which included 98 patients, was the largest study to date. Characteristics of the Mayo CHS patients are shown in this table:

The Mayo series of 98 CHS patients helped establish these  diagnostic criteria. These criteria include: 

  • Essential for diagnosis: Long-term cannabis use. 
  • Major features: Severe cyclic nausea and vomiting, Resolution with cannabis cessation, relief of symptoms with hot showers or baths, abdominal pain epigastric or periumbilical, weekly use of marijuana. 
  • Supportive features: age less than 50 years, weight loss of > 11 pounds (5 kg), morning predominance of symptoms, normal bowel habits, negative laboratory, radiographic, and endoscopic tests.

Acute medical treatment for severe CHS episodes includes IV fluids for dehydration and supportive care. Traditional anti-emetic drugs such as Zofran have been largely ineffective. The only reliable long term treatment is the cessation of cannabis. The percentage of patients who relapse has not been quantified to date. The case series data in the medical literature currently document that many of the patients who return to cannabis use have recurrent CHS.

Voters have legalized the recreational use of cannabis in 11 states (California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Maine, Alaska, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Vermont). Because cannabis was legalized through popular vote and not via the usual Food and Drug Administration (FDA) channels, the drug did not undergo government scrutiny regarding toxicities and long term health effects. I discussed this topic in an earlier column.  

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome should be considered as a plausible diagnosis in anyone with recurrent severe vomiting and a strong history of cannabis abuse. 

Because of recent legalization of recreational and medical cannabis use in many states, expect the incidence of Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome to increase. If your patient, or someone you know and love, develops recurrent severe vomiting in the setting of a strong history of cannabis abuse, the diagnosis may very well be Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. 

The good news is that once the diagnosis is made, the syndrome is curable with cannabis abstinence.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

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QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ANESTHESIA

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Case study #2020: A healthy 48-year-old woman is anesthetized for a hysterectomy. As the surgery is ending, her blood pressure skyrockets to 220/160 and her pulse rate rises to 165 beats per minute. She is resuscitated and transferred to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

What happened? The hospital’s Quality Assurance (QA) program, also known as a Quality Improvement (QI) program, is charged with investigating this adverse event.  

Mistakes happen in medicine.

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine published the landmark “To Err is Human” report, which described that adverse events occurred in 3 – 4% of all hospital admissions, and that over 50% of the adverse events were due to preventable medical errors. Approximately 10% of the adverse events led to deaths. The report estimated that 44,000 – 98,000 Americans died each year due to medical errors. The report estimated that medical errors were the 8th leading cause of death in the United States. The report recommended that instead of blaming individuals, to instead prevent future errors by designing safety into the system. 

My experience in Quality assurance/Quality improvement programs includes:

  • Stanford University Hospital QA Committee (Care Review Committee), 1997 – 2009
  • Stanford University Anesthesia QA Committee, 2002 – 2009, and
  • Waverley Surgery Center QI Committee (Chairman), 2002 – present.

The analysis of complications is one of the most interesting aspects of medicine. Every complication has an opening event, a story line, and a conclusion. Using Case study #2020 above, let’s trace through the steps involved in improving medical quality:

  1. CAPTURE THE CASES. The first task is to find out about all adverse events. This can be harder than it sounds. Ideally the involved MDs and nurses will fill out an Incident Report or an Adverse Event Report, which includes the details of what happened to their patient. But many clinicians are reluctant to hang out their dirty laundry, and it’s possible for adverse events to be hidden, buried, or ignored. This hampers care improvement. We can’t fix problems we haven’t identified. At a large hospital, Adverse Event Reports are digitally entered into a computer site. At a smaller facility such as a surgery center, Adverse Event Reports are filed on paper forms. In either case, once the case is captured, the QA system can analyze the event. Case study #2020: The attending surgeon and the operating room nurse each filed digital Adverse Event documents because of their patient’s extremely high blood pressure and heart rate, and her unplanned admission to the ICU.
  2. ANALYZE ADVERSE INCIDENT REPORTS FOR SIGNIFICANT NEGATIVE CLINICAL OUTCOMES, OR THE NEAR MISS OF A NEGATIVE OUTCOME. Some Adverse Events reports are more significant than others. Some reports reveal only minor issues such as prolonged post-operative nausea and vomiting, or a prolonged Post Anesthesia Care Unit stay. An MD or specially trained RN will sift through the stack of Adverse Event Reports and choose those problems which require attention. Case study #2020: The chairperson of the QA Committee notes the elevated BP and heart rate and the unplanned ICU admission, and flags this case for immediate committee evaluation.
  3. ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS . . . RETRIEVE AND REVIEW ALL RELEVANT MEDICAL RECORDS FOR COMMITTEE: Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is an organized approach to ferreting out the causes for any adverse medical event. The goal of RCA is to find out what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. After a hospital complication, all electronic medical records (EMRs) pertinent to the incident are reviewed to discern what happened. A time line is formulated, with the goal of finding a cause and effect relationship that led to the complication. The hospital EMR may be hundreds of pages long, depending on the complexity of the case. At an outpatient surgery center where medical records are usually kept on paper, the review process is faster and easier, as the entire case may be documented in twenty pertinent pages or less. Case #2020: Review of the case shows that the BP and heart rate increases occurred within minutes after the anesthesiologist administered an intravenous dose of the drug atropine.
  4. INTERVIEW THE CLINICIANS: Members of the committee are charged with interviewing the individuals present at the time of the complication. Case #2020: The surgeon, operating room nurse, and the anesthesiologist are interviewed. The initial interviews with the clinicians are done prior to the QA Committee meeting on the case, although key clinicians may be interviewed at the actual QA Committee meeting. The pertinent revelation was that the anesthesiologist administered an intravenous dose of 4 mg of Zofran, and charted that the dose was administered. After the case was over, he said he looked for the empty atropine ampoule, and discovered that it was instead an empty 1 mg epinephrine ampoule.
  5. ASSESS WHAT HAPPENED: In Case #2020: The unintended intravenous bolus injection of 1 mg of epinephrine into a stable patient caused life-threatening hypertension and elevated heart rate. Epinephrine is adrenaline, and a dose of 1 mg IV bolus is only appropriate if a patient is in cardiac arrest situation, such as ventricular fibrillation, asystole (flat line), or pulseless electrical activity. The administration of a wrong medicine by human error is called “syringe swap” or “ampoule swap.”  It’s a preventable human error. In this case the atropine and epinephrine ampoules were nearly identical in size, color, and shape. The two different ampoules were stored in the same drawer in the anesthesiologist’s drug cart, and the distance between the two storage areas was only 2 inches.
  6. REVIEW THE RELEVANT MEDICAL LITERATURE: Using PUBMED.com,     it’s easy to search for similar incidents in the medical literature. The committee found an example of the very same epinephrine ampoule swap occurring previously.  In this published case report, an epinephrine ampoule was erroneously injected instead of a similar appearing neostigmine ampoule at the conclusion of a hysterectomy. The patient had an immediate cardiac arrest. The patient survived, but required an ICU stay. The neostigmine and adrenaline ampoules were very similar and were stored in adjacent compartments in the anesthesia cart.
  7. THE QA COMMITTEE DISCUSSES THE CASE: The committee consists of MDs from multiple specialties. Case #2020: These MDs  discuss the case and the probable cause of the adverse event, and discuss possible system improvements to prevent repeat of the error in the future. These suggestions are based on the education, experience, and training of the committee members, as well as from input from the relevant medical literature. Note that the committee does not criticize or blame the anesthesiologist for making the error, and does not make a point of singling out the individual physician as the culprit. 
  8. MAKE SYSTEM CHANGES TO AVOID FUTURE SIMILAR COMPLICATIONS: Case #2020: The committee decides to remove all 1 mg  epinephrine ampoules from the readily accessible anesthesiologist drug drawers in all operating rooms, to prevent the inadvertent administration of another dangerous bolus of epinephrine when it could be mistaken for Zofran or any other drug. (Epinephrine is an important medication to be administered during cardiac arrests, allergic reactions, or for cardiac patients whose blood pressure is falling precipitously, so the medication must be available.) The committee recommends that the only formulation of epinephrine included in the anesthesia drug drawer be the clearly labeled cardiac arrest epinephrine bolus syringes, which are packaged in individual cardboard  boxes. The dangerous 1-milliliter epinephrine ampoules are moved out of the operating room. The recommended policy and procedure is for anesthesiologists to request the 1-milliliter ampoules to be retrieved for them from pharmacy storage, by the operating room nurse, only when needed. This is expected to be a rare occurrence.
  9. SOME PEER REVIEW OUTCOMES REQUIRE REPORTING TO THE CALIFORNIA STATE MEDICAL BOARD: QA/QI work is part of peer review, and cannot be subpoenaed during any legal malpractice litigation. In California, a QA investigation triggers a obligated report to the state Medical Board when the following may have occurred: (A) Incompetence, or gross or repeated deviation from the standard of care involving death or serious bodily injury to one or more patients, to the extent or in such a manner as to be dangerous or injurious to any person or to the public; (B) The use, prescribing, or administration to himself or herself of any controlled substance, or the use of any dangerous drug or of alcoholic beverages, to the extent or in such a manner as to be dangerous or injurious to the licentiate, any other person, or the public, or to the extent that such use impairs the ability of the licentiate to practice safely; (C) Repeated acts of clearly excessive prescribing, furnishing, or administering of controlled substances or repeated acts of prescribing, dispensing, or furnishing of controlled substances without a good faith effort prior examination of the patient and medical reason therefor; or (D) Sexual misconduct with one or more patients during a course of treatment or an examination
  10. ONGOING METRICS ARE TRENDED TO TRACK CHANGES IN COMPLICATION RATES: The QA Committee must collect follow up data to determine if the suggested system change improved future outcomes. If the data indicates worsening trends, then the committee will investigate and consider further Quality Improvement measures. Case #2020: for two years following the new epinephrine policy there were zero ampoules swaps involving epinephrine. In addition, zero other episodes of ampoule swap of any other drugs occurred. 

Mistakes happen. The role of a QA Committee is to prevent them from happening again. This method of making system changes so that Hazards are less likely to become Losses, is depicted in the Swiss Cheese model below:

The Swiss Cheese Model was originally designed to eliminate errors in the oil industry, and was later adopted by the airline industry. Visualize the pieces of Swiss Cheese as barriers between Hazards and Losses. Each single Swiss Cheese barrier isn’t perfect and isn’t sufficient to prevent a hazard. Each additional barrier is designed so that the error that penetrated through the first barrier is stopped by the second barrier. Designing different barriers at different stages of medical care, with different strengths and weaknesses, makes it more difficult for a Hazard (mistake) to lead to a Loss (serious injury or death). The Swiss Cheese model is designed to make it difficult for a straight line to exist from Hazard to Losses.

The Quality Assurance process is summarized in the article Overview of the Quality Assurance Movement in Health Care.  Hospitals and surgery centers in your area are following Quality Assurance processes similar to those discussed above, so that when you or your loved ones are admitted for medical care, the chances of a serious complication will be as close to zero as possible.

Note: The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) is the national organization that deals with safety issues in anesthesiology practice. The monthly APSF newsletters are available online at https://www.apsf.org, and serve as valuable educational material for every anesthesiologist regarding safety issues in our specialty.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?
Why Did Take Me So Long To Wake From General Anesthesia?
Will I Have a Breathing Tube During Anesthesia?
What Are the Common Anesthesia Medications?
How Safe is Anesthesia in the 21st Century?
Will I Be Nauseated After General Anesthesia?
What Are the Anesthesia Risks For Children?
The most popular posts for anesthesia professionals on The Anesthesia Consultant  include:
10 Trends for the Future of Anesthesia
Should You Cancel Anesthesia for a Potassium Level of 3.6?
12 Important Things to Know as You Near the End of Your Anesthesia Training
Should You Cancel Surgery For a Blood Pressure = 178/108?
Advice For Passing the Anesthesia Oral Board Exams
What Personal Characteristics are Necessary to Become a Successful Anesthesiologist?

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM.

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SURGEON GENERAL, WHERE ART THOU?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT Leave a comment
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
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Picture this: You’re a highly qualified, board-certified physician anesthesiologist with a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Berkeley. President Donald Trump appoints you to be the Surgeon General of the United States. Then the COVID-19 pandemic rears its head, and you can’t speak out regarding appropriate public health measures without crossing your President. Such is the plight of Dr. Jerome Adams, the 20th Surgeon General of the United States, stuck between supporting medical science or avoiding conflict the President he works for.

Dr. Adams is the first anesthesiologist to hold the office of Surgeon General when he was appointed in 2017. Dr. Adams’ area of public health expertise is the prevention and management of opioid abuse. In 2014 then-Governor of Indiana Mike Pence appointed Dr. Adams to be the Indiana Health Commissioner. Under Dr. Adams’ guidance, Indiana counties created syringe exchanges to contain the spread of AIDS throughout the state.

As an anesthesiologist, I’m a fan of Jerome Adams. We’re separated by only one degree: Dr. Adams is an acquaintance of Dr. Michael Champeau, who is the President of my anesthesia group in California. Dr. Adams is highly respected within the anesthesia world, and was a lead speaker at the 2019 American Society of Anesthesiologists National Meeting.

Dr. Adams was the subject of an article in The Washington Post on July 12, 2020, titled “Surgeon General Jerome Adams may be the nicest guy in the Trump Administration. But is that what America needs right now?” The article states, “Adams came to Washington three years ago to tackle another problem —  the raging opioid crisis — by drawing from a painful personal history with a brother who has struggled with substance abuse. Yet he has been thrust into the role of the pandemic surgeon general.” The article describes Jerome Adams as a fine man, experienced in tackling the opioid problem, but now confronted with the difficult public health reality of the coronavirus.

Most people don’t understand the office of the Surgeon General, a position often referred to as “The Nation’s Doctor.”The Surgeon General of the United States is the head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and is the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the United States. In contrast, the Attorney General of the United States is the head of the United States Department of Justice, the chief lawyer of the United States government, and a member of the President’s Cabinet. Compared to the Attorney General, the Surgeon General has historically been an office with little power.

Dr. Adams’ legacy as Surgeon General will likely be clouded by our nation’s public health response to the COVID-19 virus. At the time of this writing, COVID case numbers and death rates are peaking in the United States, five months after the onset of the outbreak. Dr. Adams is in a precarious position: he was appointed to the office of Surgeon General by a President who has spent much of 2020 ignoring the advice of medical experts and advisors. If Dr. Adams publicly emphasizes the medical facts regarding battling the COVID pandemic (6-foot social distancing, wearing masks, avoiding crowded indoor settings) he risks contradicting the President who appointed him to the office. If Dr. Adams remains mute on the appropriate public health approach to battling the COVID pandemic, he risks marring his reputation as the lead public health officer in the United States.

Dr. Adams’ early response to the COVID pandemic in February 2020 included advice for the general public to not wear masks:

On Feb. 29, 2020, Adams tweeted: 

In an interview with “Fox & Friends” on March 2, 2020, Dr. Adams said: “One of the things (the general public) shouldn’t be doing is going out and buying masks. . . . It has not been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus amongst the general public. . . . Folks who don’t know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot, and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus. You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a healthcare provider.”

This advice was contrary to the now-accepted public health strategy of requiring masks on everyone. The fact that the Surgeon General made the opposite recommendation in February 2020 was unfortunate. He meant well, as his advice was given at a time when there were inadequate amounts of PPE (personal protective equipment) for healthcare workers who were battling COVID on the hospital frontlines. Adams did not want an inadequate supply of masks to be redirected away from hospitals. When the public health recommendation later pivoted 180 degrees to wearing masks publicly, Adams’ February admonition seemed to have been bad advice.

In the spring of 2020, Adams appeared daily on television as part of President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. When the Trump administration was facing criticisms about its COVID-19 response in hard-hit minority communities, Dr. Adams’ remarks at a April 10, 2020 daily press briefing were designed to address those concerns. Critics believed several comments made by Adams played into racial stereotypes. “Avoid alcohol, tobacco and drugs,” Adams said. He urged communities of color to “step up” to fight the disease. “We need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat-N.Y.) said the comments amplified claims about minority populations engaging in risky behaviors.

In the weeks following April 10th, 2020, Dr. Adams’ appearances with the Coronavirus Task Force became limited, and his role in COVID-19 public health policy was minimized.

The website of the Surgeon General (see above) has a paucity of information about the pandemic. There is one link for COVID-19 Updates. The website has general information about the Office of the Surgeon General (OSG), but very little medical information. There are links to Advisories on Marijuana and the Developing Brain, E-Cigarettes, and Naloxone and Opioid Overdose.

In the midst of the greatest public health crisis in one hundred years, the Surgeon General has remained—or the government has kept him—on the sidelines. At the current time the administration has distanced itself from both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Adams. The medical community sees this as unfortunate, as both physicians are respected and honest experts. 

Most Surgeons General have negligible legacies after their term is concluded. Notable past Surgeons General include:

Surgeon General Luther Terry MD (1961 – 1965), who was previously the Chief of General Medicine and Experimental Therapeutics at the National Heart Institute. Dr. Terry’s committee report issued on March 7, 1962 indicated that cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer and bronchitis, and probably a risk factor for cardiovascular disease as well.  

This report led to the familiar warning on all packages of cigarettes in the United States:

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop MD (1982-1989), was a pediatric surgeon from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine faculty. Dr. Koop released a paper which called for AIDS education in the early grades of elementary school, and he gave full support for using condoms for disease prevention. He also resisted pressure from the President Reagan to report that abortion was psychologically harmful to women. He believed abortion was a moral issue rather a public health issue.

Surgeon General Antonia Novello MD (1990-1993) was a pediatrician and the first female Surgeon General. She was a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. 

Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders MD (1993-1994) is currently a professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Elders once spoke at a United Nations conference on AIDS, and when asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity she replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.”  She was fired by President Bill Clinton that year.

What will Jerome Adams’ legacy be? We’ll only know after his term has ended and the chronicle of the COVID-19 pandemic is recorded into history books. As the top public health doctor in the United States at the time of our worst public health nightmare in a century, his feats, achievements, and non-achievements will be on the record for years to come. 

I support Dr. Jerome Adams, and urge him to use his platform, education, and experience to be a leader in America’s public health response to COVID-19.

Would President Trump fire his Surgeon General if Dr. Adams publicly disagreed with the President? Perhaps. But I believe Jerome Adams’ legacy will grow to the degree he speaks out on the side of medical science regarding the containment of the coronavirus, and to the degree the United States has a successful public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:
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BLACK MAN DIES AFTER A CONFRONTATION WITH POLICE AND INJECTION OF THE ANESTHETIC KETAMINE BY PARAMEDICS. WHAT WENT WRONG?

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THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT
Physician anesthesiologist at Stanford at Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group
Richard Novak, MD is a Stanford physician board certified in anesthesiology and internal medicine.Dr. Novak is an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, the Medical Director at Waverley Surgery Center in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto, California.
emailrjnov@yahoo.com
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Elijah McClain

Elijah McClain was a 23-year-old Black man who was detained by police just after 10:30 pm on August 24, 2019 while on his way home from picking up an iced tea for his brother. The Aurora, Colorado Police Department received a call about a “suspicious person” wearing a mask and waving his hands. 

An account of the events of that night appeared on the website thecut.com:     

Elijah McClain

The 23-year-old had made a quick trip to the convenience store to pick up an iced tea for his brother. His sister later told a local ABC affiliate  that McClain was wearing an open-face ski mask because he “had anemia and would sometimes get cold.” And although he was unarmed, simply walking home and, his sister said, listening to music, police say “a struggle ensued.” One officer accused McClain of reaching for his gun, and one put him in a carotid hold, which involves an officer applying pressure to the side of a person’s neck in order to temporarily cut off blood flow to the brain. “Due to the level of physical force applied while restraining the subject and his agitated mental state,” officers then called Aurora First Responders, who “administered life-saving measures,”  according to a local NBC affiliate. Paramedics injected McClain with what they said was a “therapeutic” amount of ketamine to sedate him, while officers held him down.

McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, and was taken off life support on August 30. His family said at the time that he was brain dead, and covered in bruises. . . .

Elijah McClain in ICU

Body-cam footage of the arrest does exist, although the Aurora Department of Police did not release it to the public until late November, months after McClain’s death. In the footage, an officer can be heard admitting McClain had done nothing illegal prior to his arrest; another accuses McClain of reaching for one of their guns. McClain, meanwhile, can be heard asking the officers to stop, explaining that they started to arrest him as he was “stopping [his] music to listen.” He gasps that he cannot breathe. He tells them his name, says he has ID but no gun, and pleads that his house is “right there.” He sobs, and vomits, and apologizes: “I wasn’t trying to do that,” he says. “I just can’t breathe correctly.” One of the officers can also be heard threatening to set his dog on McClain if he “keep[s] messing around,” and claiming he exhibited an extreme show of strength when officers tried to pin back his arms. . . .

An autopsy initially listed McClain’s cause of death as “undetermined.”

McClain’s autopsy also raised questions. The Adams County Coroner announced in early November that it wasn’t clear whether his death had been an accident, or carotid hold–related homicide, or the result of natural causes. The coroner listed McClain’s cause of death as “undetermined,” but points to hemorrhaging in his neck and abrasions on different parts of his body. Noting that “an idiosyncratic drug reaction (an unexpected reaction to a drug even at a therapeutic level) cannot be ruled out” in reference to the ketamine dosage, the report’s wording seemed to pin responsibility on McClain himself.”

A July 3, 2020 story by NBC news described the ketamine administration in this case as follows: 

The officers took McClain to the ground using a carotid control hold, a type of chokehold meant to restrict blood to the brain to render a person unconscious. . . .

McClain “briefly went unconscious,” according to a report the local district attorney, Dave Young, completed last fall. McClain could also be heard in the police video telling the officers, “I can’t breathe, please,” and he vomited while he was on the ground.

A medic told officers that “when the ambulance gets here, we’re going to go ahead and give him some ketamine.”

The officers responded, “Sounds good,” and they told the medic that McClain appeared to be “on” something and that he had “incredible strength.”

An Aurora Fire Rescue medic injected McClain with 500 milligrams of ketamine, according to the district attorney’s report.

The coroner found that McClain’s death was due to “undetermined causes,” . . . The medic at the scene estimated that McClain weighed 220 pounds, Young’s report said. But the coroner said he was 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighed 140 pounds.

According to documents shared by Aurora Fire Rescue, the standard dose of ketamine is 5 milligrams per each kilogram of a person’s weight. That would mean that instead of 500 milligrams of ketamine, McClain should have received about 320 milligrams.

The use of ketamine by Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) was reviewed in the paper Prehospital Use of IM Ketamine for Sedation of Violent and Agitated Patients in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine. Regarding the indications to use ketamine in the pre-hospital setting, the paper stated: “Violent and agitated patients pose a serious challenge for emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. Rapid control of these patients is paramount to successful prehospital evaluation and also for the safety of both the patient and crew. Sedation is often required for these patients, but the ideal choice of medication is not clear.” In this retrospective review of prehospital ketamine use, 50 of the 52 patients studied were rapidly sedated, and only three patients had negative side effects. But these three side effects were significant, including the requirement for an endotracheal tube (ETT) in two patients, and the requirement for bag valve mask (BVM) ventilation in one patient. ETT or BVM are indicated when airway or breathing cease to be adequate. The publication included the following algorithm to guide the pre-hospital usage of ketamine:

What probably happened to cause Elijah McClain’s death? 

As an anesthesiologist I’ve administered ketamine safely to hundreds of patients. It’s a potent drug but poses life-threatening risks if given by personnel who are not airway experts. I have no access to the medical records or police records from Elijah McClain’s death. But based on reading the media coverage, here’s my interpretation regarding the administration of ketamine to Elijah McClain:

Ketamine is a potent injectable drug used by anesthesiologists to provide sedation or general anesthesia. (Reference: Elsevier Clinical Key Monograph, Lane Medical Library online, Stanford University Medical Center) It can be injected via an intravenous line, or injected into a muscle (intramuscularly, or IM) as it was to Elijah McClain. Ketamine produces an anesthetic state characterized by profound pain relief with minimal depression of breathing. Ketamine brings on a trancelike state of unconsciousness, but also produces undesirable psychological reactions during awakening which are called emergence reactions. Common symptoms of emergence reactions are vivid dreams, a sense of floating out of body, and illusions which seem to be misinterpretations of a real, external sensory experience. (Reference: Miller’s Anesthesia, 9th edition, Chapter 23, Intravenous Anesthetics)

For anesthesiologists the primary indication intramuscular/IM ketamine is to induce general anesthesia in uncooperative patients, young children, or adolescents who will not remain still and allow the elective placement of an intravenous/IV catheter. An intramuscular injection of ketamine into the deltoid muscle of the shoulder or the quadraceps muscle of the thigh will bring on the onset of anesthesia in 3 to 5 minutes. Per the chart below, the general anesthesia induction dose of ketamine is 4-6 mg/kg when used IM:

Uses and Doses of Ketamine

From Reves JG, Glass P, Lubarsky DA, et al. Intravenous anesthetics. In: Miller RD, Eriksson LI, Fleischer LA, et al, eds.  Miller’s Anesthesia,  7th ed. Philadelphia: Churchill Livingstone; 2010: 719–768.

Induction of general anesthesia  ∗ 0.5-2 mg/kg IV  
4-6 mg/kg IM
Maintenance of general anesthesia0.5-1 mg/kg IV with N  2  O 50% in O  2  
15-45 μg/kg/min IV with N  2  O 50%-70% in O  2 
30-90 μg/kg/min IV without N  2  O
Sedation and analgesia0.2-0.8 mg/kg IV over 2-3 min
2-4 mg/kg IM
Preemptive or preventive analgesia0.15-0.25 mg/kg IV

McClain’s demise may have been caused by the effects of ketamine, combined with inadequate management/resuscitation of a ketamine-anesthetized adult by non-anesthesia professionals:

  1. McClain was not NPO prior to his anesthetic. Nothing by mouth (nil per os, or NPO) is the standard of care prior to elective surgery. Vomiting stomach contents after the induction of general anesthesia can lead to aspiration of these stomach contents into the windpipe and/or lungs, which can cause death. Patients for elective surgery who receive ketamine always have an empty stomach. It’s dangerous for a paramedic to induce general anesthesia in an individual who is not NPO, because any vomiting could obstruct the airway and breathing. According to Elsevier Clinical Key Monograph, Lane Medical Library online, Stanford University Medical Center: “Vomiting has been reported following ketamine administration. Intact laryngeal-pharyngeal reflexes may offer some protection, however the possibility of aspiration must be considered.”
  2. Ketamine causes increased airway secretions, and the accumulation of these secretions on the vocal cords can cause laryngospasm (the clamping of the vocal cords together which blocks off all airflow). Ketamine causes increased production of saliva and increased secretions in the trachea and bronchial passages. Drugs called antisialagogues which block the production of these excess secretion