Do you need an anesthesiologist for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy? In the aftermath of Joan Rivers' tragic death following an upper endoscopy procedure at a…
An otherwise healthy 50-year-old female patient takes three herb pills daily: gingko, kava, and ginseng. What do you do when this patient needs elective…
Succinylcholine: vital drug or dinosaur? Succinylcholine (sux) has the wonderful advantage of rendering a patient paralyzed in less than a minute, and the discouraging…
Anesthesiologists spend thousands of hours in operating rooms, surrounded by other people’s inventions. We may think, “Why can’t I be a physician entrepreneur? Why…
Screening prior to outpatient surgery is important. Over 70% of elective surgeries in the United States are ambulatory or outpatient surgeries, in which the…
Academic and private practice anesthesia differ. I'm fortunate to be a member of the clinical faculty in the Department of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain…
Every anesthesia practitioner dreads airway disasters. Anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists are airway experts, but anesthesia professionals are often the only person in the operating…
Key questions in our specialty in 2014 related to Obamacare and anesthesia. This article was originally published in 2014, when Barack Obama was the…
On February 2, 2014, Academy Award-winning actor Phillip Seymour Hoffmann was found dead with a needle in his arm and syringes and packets of…
Important advances in the history of anesthesia changed the specialty forever. Humans have inhabited the Earth for 200,000 years, yet the discovery of surgical…
13-year-old Jahi McMath of Oakland, California suffered sudden bleeding from her nose and mouth and cardiac arrest following a December 9th 2013 tonsillectomy, a…
You’re an attending anesthesiologist. You enter another colleague’s operating room to give him a bathroom break during his 6-hour plastic surgery case, and you…