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THE TOP 20 DOCTORS IN THE HISTORY OF ANESTHESIA

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 4 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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The first public demonstration of anesthesia, at the Ether Dome in Massachusetts General Hospital

Important advances in the history of anesthesia changed medicine forever. Humans have inhabited the Earth for 200,000 years, yet the discovery of surgical anesthesia was a relatively recent development in the mid-1800s. For thousands of years most surgical procedures were accompanied by severe pain, and the only strategies available to decrease pain were to give patients alcohol or opium until they were stuporous. How did our specialty advance from prescribing patients two shots of whiskey to administering safe modern anesthesia? In chronologic order, my choices for the most important doctors in the history of anesthesia are:

1842. Dr. Crawford Long, Georgia, USA. THE CO-DISCOVERER OF ETHER AS A GENERAL ANESTHETIC.  Dr. Long was an American surgeon recognized for introducing the use of inhaled ether as a general anesthetic. Dr. Long administered ether for the first time on March 30, 1842, to remove a tumor from the neck of patient James Venable. Dr. Long dripped ether on a towel through which Mr. Venable inhaled. Dr. Long performed multiple surgeries using this technique, but did not publish his findings until seven years later in 1849 in The Southern Medical and Surgical Journal. As a result, there is a dispute whether Dr. Crawford Long or Dr. William Morton (below) discovered ether anesthesia first. 

1846. Dr. William Morton, Boston, USA. THE FIRST PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION OF ETHER AS A GENERAL ANESTHETIC.  Dr. Morton performed the first public demonstration of general anesthesia at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846. Morton, a local dentist, utilized inhaled ether to anesthetize patient Gilbert Abbott for removal of a tumor on the patient’s neck. According to surgeon John Collins Warren’s account of the operation, “(the patient) said that he had felt as if his neck had been scratched; but subsequently, when inquired of by me, his statement was, that he did not experience pain at the time, although aware that the operation was proceeding.” Morton was unaware of Dr. Crawford Long’s prior work which began four years earlier in 1842. Morton published his accomplishment in the December 1846 issue of Medical Examiner. Comment: Both Dr. Long and Morton deserve recognition for the discovery and eventual application of ether as a general anesthetic drug. The invention of ether changed medical care forever, making painless surgery a reality.

1853.  Dr. Alexander Wood, Scotland. THE DISCOVERY OF THE HYPODERMIC NEEDLE, THE SYRINGE, AND THE INJECTION OF MORPHINE. Dr. Wood invented a hollow needle that fit on the end of a piston-style syringe, and used the syringe and needle combination to successfully treat pain by injections of morphine.  Comment: Most anesthetic drugs today are injected intravenously. Such injections would be impossible without the invention of the syringe.

1885. Dr. William Halsted, Baltimore, USA. THE DISCOVERY OF INJECTABLE COCAINE AND LOCAL ANESTHESIA.  Cocaine was the first local anesthetic discovered. Dr. Halsted of Johns Hopkins University first injected 4% cocaine into a patient’s forearm and concluded that cocaine blocked sensation. The patient’s arm was numb below but not above the point of injection. Halstead became addicted to cocaine, and later to morphine.  Comment: The discovery of local anesthesia gave doctors the power to block pain in specific locations. The improved local anesthetics procaine (Novocain) and lidocaine were later discovered in 1905 and 1948, respectively.

1899. Dr. August Karl Gustav Bier, Germany. THE FIRST TO PERFORM SPINAL ANESTHESIA, AND ALSO THE INVENTOR OF THE BIER BLOCK (AN INTRAVENOUS REGIONAL ANESTHESIA TECHNIQUE FOR HAND OR FOOT SURGERY).  Dr. Bier was a German surgeon before the concept of an anesthesia specialist was invented. He performed the first surgery under spinal anesthesia in 1899. Dr. Bier injected cocaine through a spinal needle, which paralyzed the lower half of his patient. Dr. Bier was able to perform painless ankle surgery. The patient was fully conscious during the operation. Comment: Dr. Bier was the father of regional anesthesia, an important tool in the repertoire of a modern anesthesiologist.

Dr. Nikolai Korotkov

1905. Dr. Nikolai Korotkov, Russia. THE DISCOVERY OF THE MEASUREMENT OF BLOOD PRESSURE BY BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF. Dr. Korotkov described the sounds produced during auscultation with a stethoscope over a distal portion of an artery as a blood pressure cuff was deflated. These Korotkoff sounds resulted in an accurate determination of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Comment: Anesthesiologists monitor patients repeatedly during every surgery. A patient’s vital signs are the heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and temperature. It would be impossible to administer safe anesthesia without blood pressure measurement. Low blood pressures may be evidence of anesthetic overdose, excessive bleeding, or heart dysfunction. High blood pressures may be evidence of inadequate anesthetic depth or uncontrolled hypertension.

The cuffed endotracheal tube
Dr. Aurthur Guedel

1932. Dr. Arthur Guedel, Wisconsin, USA. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CUFFED ENDOTRACHEAL BREATHING TUBE. Dr. Guedel added an inflatable cuff to the distal end of a breathing tube to be inserted into a patient’s trachea. This advance allowed the use of positive-pressure ventilation into a patient’s lungs. Comment: Surgery within the abdomen and chest would be impossible without controlling the airway and breathing with a tube in the trachea. Advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) of Airway-Breathing-Circulation depends on the insertion of a cuffed endotracheal tube.

1927. Dr. Ralph Waters, University of Wisconsin, USA. THE FIRST ANESTHESIA RESIDENCY PROGRAM. Before Dr. Waters, a variety of individuals administered anesthesia. He developed the first department of anesthesia at a medical school, and established the first resident training program in anesthesia. He is considered the “father of academic anesthesia.” Dr. Waters also introduced the anesthetic gas cyclopropane into clinical use, the carbon dioxide absorption method on the anesthesia machine, and endobronchial anesthesia for thoracic surgery. Comment: Every university anesthesia residency program owes a debt to the legacy of Ralph Waters. 

Dr. John Lundy

1934. Dr. John Lundy, Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, USA. THE INTRODUCTION OF INTRAVENOUS THIOPENTAL AND INJECTABLE BARBITURATES.  Dr. Lundy of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota introduced the intravenous anesthetic sodium thiopental into medical practice. In 1934, Dr. Ernest Volwiler and Dr. Donnalee Tabern synthesized Pentothal, the first intravenous general anesthetic. Pentothal was first used in humans on 8 March 1934 by Dr. Ralph Waters. Three months later, Dr. John Lundy started clinical trials of thiopental at the Mayo Clinic at the request of Abbott Laboratories. Injecting Pentothal provided a more pleasant induction of anesthesia than inhaling pungent ether. Comment: This was a huge breakthrough. Almost every modern anesthetic begins with the intravenous injection of an anesthetic drug. (Propofol has now replaced Pentothal.)

1941, Dr. Robert Miller, Texas, USA. INVENTION OF THE MILLER INTUBATING LARYNGOSCOPE BLADE. The Miller straight laryngoscope blade was used to elevate the epiglottis and enabled anesthesiologists to directly view the vocal cords and the laryngeal opening in an anesthetized patient, so they could directly place an endotracheal breathing tube into the trachea. Comment: The Miller straight laryngoscope blade is the second most common blade used for direct laryngoscopy today, and my personal favorite.

Dr. Harold Griffith

1942. Dr. Harold Griffith, Montreal, Canada. THE DISCOVERY OF CURARE, THE FIRST INJECTABLE MUSCLE RELAXANT.  Dr. Griffith injected the paralyzing drug curare to 25 patients during cyclopropane general anesthesia to induce muscular relaxation. Although the existence of curare was known for many years—it was used on poison arrows by South American Indians—it was not used in surgery to deliberately cause muscle relaxation until this time. Comment: Paralyzing drugs are necessary to enable the easy insertion of endotracheal tubes into anesthetized patients, and paralysis is also essential for many abdominal and chest surgeries.

1943, Dr. Robert Macintosh, England.  INVENTION OF THE MACINTOSH INTUBATING LARYNGOSCOPE BLADE. The Macintosh curved laryngoscope blade enabled anesthesiologists to indirectly elevate the epiglottis and view the vocal cords and the laryngeal opening in an anesthetized patient, so they could directly place an endotracheal breathing tube into the trachea. Comment: The Macintosh curved laryngoscope blade is the most common blade used for direct laryngoscopy today.

ventilating the lungs by bag-ventilation via a tracheostomy

1953. Dr. Bjorn Ibsen, Denmark. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST INTENSIVE CARE UNIT (ICU).  The origin of the ICU followed the Copenhagen polio epidemic of 1952, which caused respiratory failure in hundreds of patients. Hundreds of patients required ventilation for weeks. Dr. Ibsen organized over a thousand medical students who positive-pressure-ventilated the lungs of these patients by bag-ventilation via tracheostomies. This gathering uniting of physicians and medical students to manage sick patients led to Ibsen being considered the “father of intensive care.” Comment: In the ICU, the Airway-Breathing-Circulation management perfected in the operating room was extended to critically ill patients who were not undergoing surgery.

1956. Dr. Charles Suckling. THE DISCOVERY OF HALOTHANE, THE FIRST MODERN INHALED ANESTHETIC. British chemist Charles Suckling synthesized the inhaled anesthetic halothane. Halothane had significant advantages over ether or cyclopropane. Halothane had a more pleasant odor, a higher potency, faster onset, and was nonflammable. Halothane gradually replaced older anesthetic vapors and achieved worldwide acceptance. Comment: Halothane was the forerunner of our modern inhaled anesthetics isoflurane, desflurane, and sevoflurane. These drugs have faster onset and offset times, cause less nausea, and are not explosive like ether was. The discovery of halothane changed inhalation anesthesia forever.

Dr. John Severinghaus and the first blood gas analyzer

1957. Dr. John Severinghaus, UCSF, California, USA. THE FIRST MEASUREMENT OF ACID/BASE CHEMISTRY OF HUMAN BLOOD.  Dr. Severinghaus developed the first blood gas analyzer, now on display in the Smithsonian Museum, which measured the pH, pCO2, and pO2 in a sample of arterial blood. https://www.mlo-online.com/continuing-education/article/13008466/blood-gas-testing-a-brief-history-and-new-regulatory-developments  He also developed the initial methods for measuring end-tidal gas concentrations in anesthetized patients in the mid-1970s, and he worked with Dr. Eger (below) on the discovery of minimum alveolar concentration of inhaled anesthetics. He died in 2021 at the age of 99 years. Comment: Measuring blood gases in an acutely ill patient is a cornerstone of all ER and ICU medicine. Measuring blood gases is also routine in cardiac, neurosurgical, and trauma anesthesia, and the measurement of end-tidal gas concentration is a standard in general anesthetics today.

1960s. Dr. Ted Eger, UCSF, California, USA. DISCOVERY OF THE MINIMUM ALVEOLAR CONCENTRATION OF POTENT INHALED ANESTHETICS. Dr. Eger defined the science of inhaled anesthesia uptake and concentration when he characterized the Minimum Alveolar Concentration (MAC) of every gaseous anesthesia drug. Per Dr. Eger’s New York Times obituary when he died at the age of 86 in 2017, he was “a leader in the development of a now universally used technique to determine the proper dose of anesthetic gas administered in operating rooms.” Comment: Almost every general anesthetic today includes some form of an inhaled anesthetic such as sevoflurane, desflurane, or nitrous oxide. Dr. Eger’s work defined the principles of how much gas to administer to each patient.

A pulse oximeter probe
Dr. William New

1983. Dr. William New, Stanford University, California, USA. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PULSE OXIMETRY MONITORING. The Nellcor pulse oximeter, co-developed by Stanford anesthesiologist Dr. William New, was the first commercially available device to measure the oxygen saturation in a patient’s bloodstream. The Nellcor pulse oximeter had the unique feature of lowering the audible pitch of the pulse tone as the oxygen saturation dropped, giving anesthesiologists an audible early warning that their patient’s heart and brain were in danger of low oxygen levels. Comment: The Nellcor changed patient monitoring forever. Oxygen saturation is now monitored before, during, and after every surgery. Prior to Nellcor monitoring, the first sign of low oxygen levels was often a cardiac arrest. Following the invention of the Nellcor, oxygen saturation became the fifth vital sign, along with pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and temperature.

1987. Dr. Archie Brain, England. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST COMMERCIAL LARYNGEAL MASK AIRWAY. The Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) replaced the endotracheal tube as the airway device for many general anesthetics. The LMA can be inserted blindly into a patient’s mouth, does not require the patient to be paralyzed for insertion, is an easy method for securing the airway, and does not require a laryngoscope. The LMA was introduced to the United States market in 1992. Comment: The LMA revolutionized the general anesthetic technique for most extremity surgeries, some head and neck surgeries, and is used as a rescue technique in the American Society of Anesthesiologists Difficult Airway Algorithm (see below).

1990s. Dr. Jonathan Benumof, UCSD, San Diego, California, USA.  DEVELOPMENT OF THE DIFFICULT AIRWAY ALGORITHM. Dr. Benumof was the main originator of the American Society of Anesthesiologists Difficulty Airway Algorithm, first published in 1996. The Difficult Airway Algorithm describes pathways to safe airway management, and its application has saved countless lives. Comment: The Difficult Airway Algorithm is the standard of care for managing patients who are difficult to intubate and/or oxygenate. All anesthesiology providers commit the algorithm to memory, because when airway disasters occur there is simply no time for them to Google the correct order of rescue procedures.

The GlideScopy
Dr. John Pacey

2001. Dr. John Pacey, vascular and general surgeon, University of British Columbia, Canada. INVENTION OF THE GLIDESCOPE, THE WORLD’S FIRST VIDEOLARYNGOSCOPE. Dr. Pacey introduced the GlideScope (Verathon) as the first commercially available video laryngoscope in 2001. The GlideScope combined two new technologies: the video laryngoscope and the hyper-angulated laryngoscope blade, and enabling doctors and CRNAs to “see around the corner” of the airway to place endotracheal tubes into the trachea of  patients with difficult airways. Comment: Note that Dr. Pacey and several other doctors on this Top 20 List invented improvements in airway management. Failed airway management remains the most dreaded complication in anesthesia practice, as it can lead to anoxic brain damage. We are thankful to Drs. Arthur Guedel, Ralph Waters, Robert Miller, Robert Macintosh, Archie Brain, Jon Benumof, and John Pacey, whose inventions made intubation of the difficult airway . . . less difficult. 

These are the top 20 doctors who made major advances in the history of anesthesia as I see them. Who will be the next successful inventor to advance our specialty? At Stanford University our department is titled the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. A key question for the future of Anesthesiology is “How do anesthetics work on the brain?” A key question for the future of Pain Medicine is “How can we more effectively block pain?” In 2016 an estimated 20.4% of the adults in the United States had chronic pain, and the relief of pain remains a key unsolved problem. Anesthesiologists or scientists who develop answers to these questions will likely join The Top Doctors in the History of Anesthesia list.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The ultimate chronicle of anesthesia history is The Wondrous Story of Anesthesia, edited by Dr. Ted Eger, Dr. Laurence Saidman, and Dr. Rod Westhorpe. It’s available on Amazon and deserves to be on the bookshelf of every medical library in the world.

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

CARDIAC ARREST DURING A PEDIATRIC TONSILLECTOMY

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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 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?
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?

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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“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

*

*

*

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 YOU HAVE A BREATHING TUBE DOWN YOUR THROAT DURING YOUR SURGERY?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 52 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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One of the most common questions I hear from patients immediately prior to their surgical anesthetic is, “Will I have a breathing tube down my throat during anesthesia?”

The answer is: “It depends.”

placing anesthesia breathing tube

Let’s answer this question for some common surgeries:

KNEE ARTHROSCOPY: Common knee arthroscopy procedures are meniscectomies and anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions. Anesthetic options include general anesthesia, regional anesthesia, or local anesthesia. Most knee arthroscopies are performed under a general anesthetic, in which the anesthesiologist injects propofol into your intravenous line to make you fall asleep. After you’re asleep, the most common airway tube used for knee arthroscopy is a laryngeal mask airway (LMA). The LMA in inserted into your mouth, behind your tongue and past your uvula, to a depth just superior to your voice box. The majority of patients will breath on their own during surgery. The LMA keeps you from snoring or having significant obstruction of your airway passages. In select patients, including very obese patients, an endotracheal tube (ETT) will be inserted instead of an LMA. The ETT requires the anesthesiologist to look directly into your voice box and insert the tube through and past your vocal cords. With either the LMA or the ETT, you’ll be asleep and will have no awareness of the airway tube except for a sore throat after surgery. A lesser number of knee arthroscopies are performed under a regional anesthetic which does not require a breathing tube. The regional anesthetic options include a blockade of the femoral nerve located in your groin or numbing the entire lower half of your body with a spinal or epidural anesthetic injected into your low back. A small number of knee arthroscopies are done with local anesthesia injected into your knee joint, in combination with intravenous sedative medications into your IV. Why are most knee arthroscopies performed with general anesthesia, which typically requires an airway tube? Because in an anesthesiologist’s hands, an airway tube is a common intervention with an acceptable risk profile. A light general anesthetic is a simpler anesthetic than a femoral nerve block, a spinal, or an epidural anesthetic.

Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA)

Endotracheal Tube (ETT)

NOSE AND THROAT SURGERIES SUCH AS TONSILLECTOMY AND RHINOPLASTY: Almost all nose and throat surgeries require an airway tube, so anesthetic gases and oxygen can be ventilated in and out through your windpipe safely during the time the surgeon is working on these breathing passages.

ABDOMINAL SURGERIES, INCLUDING LAPAROSCOPY: Almost all intra-abdominal surgeries require an airway tube to guarantee adequate ventilation of anesthetic gases and oxygen in and out of your lungs while the surgeon works inside your abdomen.

CHEST SURGERIES AND OPEN HEART SURGERIES: Almost all intra-thoracic surgeries require an airway tube to guarantee adequate ventilation of anesthetic gases and oxygen in and out of your lungs while the surgeon works inside your chest.

TOTAL KNEE REPLACEMENT AND TOTAL HIP REPLACEMENT: The majority of total knee and hip replacement surgeries are performed using spinal, epidural and/or nerve block anesthesia anesthesia to block pain to the lower half of the body. The anesthesiologist often chooses to supplement the regional anesthesia with intravenous sedation, or supplement with a general anesthetic which requires an airway tube. Why add sedation or general anesthesia to the regional block anesthesia? It’s simple: most patients have zero interest in being awake while they listen to the surgeon saw through their knee joint or hammer their new total hip into place.

CATARACT SURGERY: Cataract surgery is usually performed using numbing local anesthetic eye drop medications. Patients are wake or mildly sedated, and no airway tube is used.

COLONOSCOPY OR STOMACH ENDOSCOPY: These procedures are performed under intravenous sedation and almost never require an airway tube.

HAND OR FOOT SURGERIES: The anesthesiologist will choose the simplest anesthetic that suffices. Sometimes the choice is local anesthesia, with or without intravenous sedation. Sometimes the choice will be a regional nerve block to numb the extremity, with or without intravenous sedation. Many times the choice will be a general anesthetic, often with an airway tube. An LMA is used more frequently than an ETT.

CESAREAN SECTION: The preferred anesthetic is a spinal or epidural block which leaves the mother awake and alert to bond with her newborn immediately after childbirth. If the Cesarean section is an urgent emergency performed because of maternal bleeding or fetal distress, and there is inadequate time to insert a spinal or epidural local anesthetic into the mother’s lower back, a general anesthetic will be performed. An ETT is always used.

PEDIATRIC SURGERIES: Tonsillectomies are a common procedure and require a breathing tube as described above. Placement of pressure ventilation tubes into a child’s ears requires general anesthetic gases to be delivered via facemask only, and no airway tube is required. Almost all pediatric surgeries require general anesthesia. Infants, toddlers, and children need to be unconscious during surgery, for emotional reasons, because their parents are not present. The majority of pediatric general anesthetics require an airway tube.

CONCLUSIONS: The safe placement of airway tubes for multiple of types of surgeries, in patients varying from newborns to 100-year-olds, is one of the reasons physician anesthesiologists train for many years.

Prior to surgery, some patients are alarmed at the notion of such a breathing tube invading their body. They fear they’ll be awake during the placement of the breathing tube, or that they’ll choke on the breathing tube.

Be reassured that almost every breathing tube is placed after your unconsciousness is assured, and breathing tubes are removed prior to your return to consciousness. A sore throat afterward is common, but be reassured this is a minor complaint that will clear in a few days.

If you have any questions, be sure to discuss them with your own physician anesthesiologist when you meet him or her prior to your surgical procedure.

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 BY CLICKING ON THE PICTURE BELOW:

DSC04882_edited

 

THE TOP 10 MOST STRESSFUL JOBS IN AMERICA versus THE TOP 10 MOST STRESSFUL SITUATIONS IN ANESTHESIOLOGY PRACTICE

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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Anesthesia has been described as 99% boredom and 1% panic. Is anesthesiology one of America’s most stressful jobs? Not according to prominent Internet media sources.

Careercast.com listed the Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs in America in 2015, and those jobs were:

  1. Firefighter
  2. Enlisted Military Personnel
  3. Military General
  4. Airline Pilot
  5. Police Officer
  6. Actor
  7. Broadcaster
  8. Event Coordinator
  9. Photo Journalist
  10. Newspaper Reporter.

ABCnews.go.com listed the Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs in America in 2014, and those jobs were:

  1. Working Parents
  2. Deployed Military Personnel
  3. Police Officer
  4. Teacher
  5. Medical Professionals (The article highlighted surgeons for their need to constantly focus, psychiatrists for their need to intently listen, dentists for being on their feet all day, and interns for their lack of sleep).
  6. Emergency Personnel (The article highlighted firefighters and emergency medical technicians).
  7. Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers
  8. Newspaper Reporters
  9. Corporate Executive
  10. Miner

Salary.com listed the Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs in America, and those jobs were:

  1. Military Personnel
  2. Surgeon
  3. Firefighter
  4. Commercial Airline Pilot
  5. Police Officer
  6. Registered Nurse in an Emergency Room
  7. Emergency Dispatch Personnel
  8. Newspaper Reporter
  9. Social Worker
  10. Teacher

“Anesthesiologist” is absent from every list. This is a public relations failure for our specialty. The challenges and stressors anesthesia professionals face every day are seemingly unknown to the media and the populace.

I’ll admit there are pressures involved with being a taxi driver, a news reporter, a photo journalist, an events coordinator, or a public relations executive. Being a working parent is a challenge, although in Northern California where I live millions of adults are working parents because both husbands and wives have to work to pay hefty Bay Area living expenses. But none of these jobs involve the risk and possibility of their clients dying each and every day.

Every surgical patient requires the utmost in vigilance from their physician anesthesiologist in order to prevent life-threatening disturbances of Airway-Breathing-Circulation. The public perceives surgeons as holding patients’ life in their skilled hands, and they are correct. But most surgeons spend the majority of their work time in clinics and on hospital wards attending to pre-operative and post-operative patients. On the 1 – 3 days a week most surgeons spend operating, they are joined in the operating room by anesthesiologists who attend to surgical patients’ lives every day.

Surgeons in trauma, cardiac, neurologic, abdominal, chest, vascular, pediatric, or microsurgery specialties have intense pressure during their hours in the operating room, but each time they don their sterile gloves and hold a scalpel, an anesthesiologist is there working with them.

What follows is my own personal “Top 10 Most Stressful” list, a list of the Most Stressful Anesthesia Situations based on my thirty years of anesthesia practice. Anesthesia practice has been described as 99% boredom and 1% panic, (http://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/is-anesthesia-99-boredom-and-1-panic) and the 1% panic times can be frightening. Read through this list. I believe it will convince you that the job of an anesthesiologist deserves to be on everyone’s Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs list.

TOP 10 MOST STRESSFUL SITUATIONS IN AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST’S JOB

  1. Emergency general anesthesia in a morbidly obese patient. Picture a 350-pound man with a bellyful of beer and pizza, who needs an emergency general anesthetic. When a patient with a Body Mass Index (BMI) > 40 needs to be put to sleep urgently, it’s dangerous. Oxygen reserves are low in a morbidly obese patient, and if the anesthesiologist is unable to place an endotracheal tube safely, there’s a genuine risk of hypoxic brain damage or cardiac arrest within minutes.
  1. Liver transplantation. Picture a patient ill with cirrhosis and end-stage-liver-failure who needs a complex 10 to 20-hour-long abdominal surgery, a surgery whichfrequently demands massive transfusion equal to one blood volume (5 liters) or more. These cases are maximally stressful in both intensity and duration.
  1. An emergency Cesarean section under general anesthesia in the wee hours of the morning. Picture a 3 a.m. emergency general anesthetic on a pregnant woman whose fetus is having cardiac decelerations (a risky slow heart rate pattern). The anesthesiologist needs to get the woman to sleep within minutes so the baby can be delivered by the obstetrician. Pregnant women have full stomachs and can have difficult airway because of weight changes and body habitus changes of term pregnancy. If the anesthesiologist mismanages the airway during emergency induction of anesthesia, both the mother and the child’s life are in danger from lack of oxygen within minutes.
  1. Acute epiglottitis in a child. Picture an 11-month-old boy crowing for every strained breath because the infection of acute epiglottis has caused swelling of his upper airway passage. These children arrive at the Emergency Room lethargic, gasping for breath, and turning blue. Safe anesthetic management requires urgently anesthetizing the child with inhaled sevoflurane, inserting an intravenous line, and placing a tracheal breathing tube before the child’s airway shuts down. A head and neck surgeon must be present to perform an emergency tracheostomy should the airway management by the anesthesiologist fails.
  1. Any emergency surgery on a newborn baby. Picture a one-pound newborn premature infant with a congenital defect that is a threat to his or her life. This defect may be a diaphragmatic hernia (the child’s intestines are herniated into the chest), an omphalocele (the child’s intestines are protruding from the anterior abdominal wall, spina bifida (a sac connected to the child’s spinal cord canal is open the air through a defect in the back), or a severe congenital heart disorder such as a transposition of the great vessels (the major blood vessels: the aorta, the vena cavas and the pulmonary artery, are attached to the heart in the wrong locations). Anesthetizing a patient this small for surgeries this big requires the utmost in skill and nerve.
  1. Acute anaphylaxis. Picture a patient’s blood pressure suddenly dropping to near zero and their airway passages constricting in a severe acute asthmatic attack. Immediate diagnosis is paramount, because intravenous epinephrine therapy will reverse most anaphylactic insults, and no other treatment is likely to be effective.
  1. Malignant Hyperthermia. Picture an emergency where an anesthetized patient’s temperature unexpectedly rises to over 104 degrees Fahrenheit due to hypermetabolic acidotic chemical changes in the patient’s skeletal muscles. The disease requires rapid diagnosis and treatment with the antidote dantrolene, as well as acute medical measures to decrease temperature, acidosis, and high blood potassium levels which can otherwise be fatal.
  1. An intraoperative myocardial infarction (heart attack). Picture an anesthetized 60-year-old patient who develops a sudden drop in their blood pressure due to failed pumping of their heart. This can occur because of an occluded coronary artery or a severe abnormal rhythm of their heart. Otherwise known as cardiogenic shock, this syndrome can lead to cardiac arrest unless the heart is supported with the precise correct amount of medications to increase the pumping function or improve the arrhythmia.
  1. Any massive trauma patient with injuries both to their airway and to their major vessels. Picture a motorcycle accident victim with a bloodied, smashed-in face and a blood pressure of near zero due to hemorrhage. The placement of an airway tube can be extremely difficult because of the altered anatomy of the head and neck, and the management of the circulation is urgent because of the empty heart and great vessels secondary to acute bleeding.
  1. The syndrome of “can’t intubate, can’t ventilate.” You’re the anesthesiologist. Picture any patient to whom you’ve just induced anesthesia, and your attempt to insert the tracheal breathing tube is impossible due to the patient’s anatomy. Next you attempt to ventilate oxygen into the patient’s lungs via a mask and bag, and you discover that you are unable to ventilate any adequate amount of oxygen. The beep-beep-beep of the oxygen saturation monitor is registering progressively lower notes, and the oximeter alarms as the patient’s oxygen saturation drops below 90%. If repeated attempts at intubation and ventilation fail and the patient’s oxygen saturation drops below 85-90% and remains low, the patient will incur hypoxic brain damage within 3 – 5 minutes. This situation is the worst-case scenario that every anesthesia professional must avoid if possible. If it does occur, the anesthesia professional or a surgical colleague must be ready and prepared to insert a surgical airway (cricothyroidotomy or tracheostomy) into the neck before enough time passes to cause irreversible brain damage.

So goes my list of Top 10 List of Stressful Anesthesia situations. If you’re an anesthesia professional, what other cases would you include on the list? Which cases would you delete? How many of these situations have you personally experienced?

This Top 10 Stressful Situations in Anesthesiology list should be enough to convince you that “Anesthesiologist” belongs on everyone’s Most Stressful Jobs list.

I would reassemble the Top 10 List of Most Stressful Jobs to be as follows:

The Anesthesia Consultant’s List of Top 10 Most Stressful Jobs

  1. Enlisted military personnel
  2. Military general in wartime
  3. Police Officer
  4. Firefighter
  5. Anesthesiologist
  6. Surgeon
  7. Emergency Room Physician
  8. Airline Pilot
  9. Air Traffic Controller
  10. Corporate Chief Executive Officer

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME TO WAKE UP FROM GENERAL ANESTHESIA?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 137 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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One of the most frequent questions I hear from patients before surgery is, “How long will it take me to wake up from general anesthesia?”

 

The answer is, “It depends.”

Your wake up from general anesthesia depends on:

  1. What drugs the anesthesia provider uses
  2. How long your surgery lasts
  3. How healthy, how old, and how slender you are
  4. What type of surgery you are having
  5. The skill level of your anesthesia provider

In best circumstances you’ll be awake and talking within 5 to 10 minutes from the time your anesthesia provider turns off the anesthetic. Let’s look at each of the five factors above regarding your wake up from general anesthesia depends on:.

  1. YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA DEPENDS ON WHAT DRUGS THE ANESTHETIST USES. The effects of modern anesthetic drugs wear off fast.
  • The most common intravenous anesthetic hypnotic drug is propofol. Propofol levels in your blood drop quickly after administration of the drug is terminated, resulting in rapid awakening.
  • The most common inhaled anesthetic drugs are sevoflurane, desflurane, and nitrous oxide. Each of these gases are exhaled from the body quickly after their administration is terminated, resulting in rapid awakening.
  • The most commonly used intravenous narcotic is fentanyl. Fentanyl levels in your blood drop quickly after administration of the drug is terminated, resulting in rapid awakening.
  • The most commonly used intravenous anti-anxiety drug is midazolam (Versed). Midazolam levels in your blood drop quickly after administration of the drug is terminated, resulting in rapid awakening.
  1. YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA DEPENDS ON HOW LONG YOUR SURGERY LASTS
  • The shorter your surgery lasts, the less injectable and inhaled drugs you will receive.
  • Lower doses and shorter exposure times to anesthetic drugs lead to a faster wake up time.
  1. YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA DEPENDS ON HOW HEALTHY, HOW OLD, AND HOW SLENDER YOU ARE
  • Healthy patients with fit hearts, lungs, and brains wake up sooner
  • Young patients wake up quicker than geriatric patients
  • Slender patients wake up quicker than very obese patients
  1. YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA DEPENDS ON WHAT TYPE OF SURGERY YOU ARE HAVING
  • A minor surgery with minimal post-operative pain, such a hammertoe repair or a tendon repair on your thumb, will lead to a faster wake up.
  • A complex surgery such as an open-heart procedure or a liver transplant will lead to a slower wake up.
  1. YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA DEPENDS ON THE SKILL LEVEL OF YOUR ANESTHETIST
  • Like any profession, the longer the duration of time a practitioner has rehearsed his or her art, the better they will perform. An experienced pilot is likely to perform smoother landings of his aircraft than a novice. An experienced anesthesiologist is likely to wake up his or her patients more quickly than a novice.
  • There are multiple possible recipes or techniques for an anesthetic plan for any given surgery. An advantageous recipe may include local anesthesia into the surgical site or a regional anesthetic block to minimize post-operative pain, rather than administering higher doses of intravenous narcotics or sedatives which can prolong wake up times. Experienced anesthesia providers develop reliable time-tested recipes for rapid wake ups.
  • Although I can’t site any data, I believe the additional training and experience of a board-certified anesthesiologist physician is an advantage over the training and experience of a certified nurse anesthetist.

YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA: EXAMPLE TIMELINE FOR A MORNING SURGERY

Let’s say you’re scheduled to have your gall bladder removed at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. This would be a typical timeline for your day:

6:00            You arrive at the operating room suite. You check in with front desk and nursing staff.

7:00             You meet your anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist. Your anesthesia provider reviews your chart, examines your airway, heart, and lungs, and explains the anesthetic plan and options to you. After you consent, he or she starts an intravenous line in your arm.

7:15             Your anesthesia provider administers intravenous midazolam (Versed) into your IV, and you become more relaxed and sedated within one minute. Your anesthesia provider wheels your gurney into the operating room, and you move yourself from the gurney to the operating room table. Because of the amnestic effect of the midazolam, you probably will not remember any of this.

7:30             Your anesthesia provider induces general anesthesia by injecting intravenous propofol and fentanyl, places a breathing tube into your windpipe, and administers inhaled sevoflurane and intravenous propofol to keep you asleep.

7:40            Your anesthesia provider, your surgeon, and the nurse move your body into optimal position on the operating room table. The nurse preps your skin with antiseptic, and the scrub tech frames your abdomen with sterile paper drapes. The surgeons wash their hands and don sterile gowns and gloves. The nurses prepare the video equipment so the surgeon can see inside your abdomen with a laparoscope during surgery.

8:00            The surgery begins.

8:45             The surgery ends. Your anesthesia provider turns off the anesthetics sevoflurane and propofol.

8:55             You open your eyes, and your anesthesia provider removes the breathing tube from your windpipe.

9:05             Your anesthesia provider transports you to the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) on the original gurney you started on.

9:10            Your anesthesia provider explains your history to the PACU nurse, who will care for you for the next hour or two. The anesthesia provider then returns to the pre-operative area to meet their next patient. Your anesthesia provider is still responsible for your orders and your medical care until you leave the PACU. He or she is available on cell phone or beeper at all times. No family members are allowed in the PACU.

10:40            You are discharged from the PACU to your inpatient room, or to home if you are fit enough to leave the hospital or surgery center.

YOUR WAKE UP FROM ANESTHESIA . . . TO REVIEW:

  1. Even though the surgery only lasted 45 minutes, you were in the operating room for one hour and 35 minutes.
  2. It took you 10 minutes to awaken, from 8:45 to 8:55.
  3. Even though you were awake and talking at 8:55, you were unlikely to remember anything from that time.
  4. You probably had no memory of the time from the midazolam administration at 7:15 until after you’d reached in the PACU, when your consciousness level returned toward normal.

I refer you to a related column AN ANESTHESIA PATIENT QUESTION: WHY DID IT TAKE ME SO LONG TO WAKE UP AFTER ANESTHESIA?”

 

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 BY CLICKING ON THE PICTURE BELOW:

DSC04882_edited

 

 

THE EBOLA VIRUS, ANESTHESIA, AND SURGERY

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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 patient infected with the Ebola virus is admitted to your hospital’s intensive care unit. You are called to intubate the Ebola patient for respiratory failure. What do you do?

ebola medical ICU team

Discussion: The first patients infected with Ebola virus entered the United States in 2014. American physicians are inexperienced with caring for patients with this disease. Because of physicians’ commitments to care for the sick and injured, individual doctors will have an obligation to provide urgent medical care during disasters. This will include Ebola patients.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) published Recommendations From the ASA Ebola Workgroup on October 24, 2014.

Select information in my column today is abstracted, copied, and summarized from this detailed publication. Let’s begin by reviewing some facts about the disease.

Ebola is an enveloped, single-stranded RNA virus, one of several hemorrhagic viral families first identified in a 1976 outbreak near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Transmission of Ebola is via direct contact, droplet contact, or possibly contact with short-range aerosols. The virus is carried in the blood and body fluids of an infected patient (i.e. urine, feces, saliva, vomit, breast milk, sweat, and semen). Risky exposures include exposure of your broken skin or mucous membranes to a percutaneous contaminated sharps injury, to contaminated fomites (a fomite is an inanimate object or substance, such as clothing, furniture, or soap, that is capable of transmitting infectious organisms from one individual to another), or to infected animals.

The case definition for Ebola includes fever, an epidemiologic risk factor including travel to West Africa (or exposure to someone who has recently traveled there), and one or more of these symptoms: severe headache, muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, unexplained bleeding or bruising (appearing anywhere from 2 to 21 days after exposure), a maculopapular rash, disseminated intravascular coagulation, or multi-organ failure.

Although coughing and sneezing are not common symptoms of Ebola, if a symptomatic patient with Ebola coughs or sneezes on someone and saliva or mucus come into contact with that person’s eyes, nose or mouth, these fluids may transmit the disease. Ebola can survive outside the body on dry surfaces such as doorknobs and countertops for several hours. Virus in body fluids (such as blood) can survive up to several days at room temperature.

The treatment for Ebola is symptomatic management of volume status using blood bank products as indicated, and management of electrolytes, oxygenation, and hemodynamics.

Healthcare professionals must wear protective outfits when treating Ebola patients. Routine Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) must include the following (when properly garbed, there should be no exposed skin):

  1. Surgical hood to ensure complete coverage of head and neck,
  2. Single-use face shield (goggles are no longer recommended due to issues with fogging and difficulty cleaning),
  3. N95 mask,
  4. An impermeable gown (with sleeves) that extends at least to mid-calf or coverall without a one-piece integrated hood (consideration should be given to wearing a protective coverall layer under the impermeable gown, which allows for layered protection and progressively less contaminated layers when doffing),
  5. Double gloves (i.e., disposable nitrile gloves with a cuff that extends beyond the cuff of the gown), the cuff of the first pair is worn under the gown and the second cuff should be over the gown, impermeable shoe covers that go to at least mid-calf or leg covers (there must be overlap of the impermeable layers),
  6. Impermeable and washable shoes,
  7. An apron that is waterproof and covers the torso to the level of the mid-calf should be used if Ebola patients have vomiting or diarrhea.

Enhanced Precaution PPE is advised for aerosol generating procedures such as intubation, extubation, bronchoscopy, airway suction, and surgery. This is the recommended level of PPE for anesthesiologists. Enhanced Precaution PPE includes:

  1. Personal Air-Purifying Respirator (PAPR) with full face piece mask,
  2. A disposable hood that extends to the shoulders and is compatible with the selected PAPR,
  3. A coverall without one-piece hood,
  4. Triple gloves (i.e., disposable nitrile with a cuff that extends beyond the cuff of the gown), the cuff of the first pair is worn under the gown and the second cuff should be over the gown and taped, and a third pair of disposable extended cuff nitrile gloves,
  5. Impermeable and washable shoes,
  6. Impermeable shoe covers, and
  7. Duct tape over all seams.

PPE donning (i.e. dressing in PPE outfit) must be performed in the proper order and monitored by a trained observer using a donning checklist. There should be separate designated areas for storage and donning of PPE (an adjacent patient care area), one-way movement to the patient’s room, and an exit to a separate room or anteroom for doffing procedures and disposal.

Doffing (i.e. PPE removal) is a high-risk process that requires a structured procedure, a trained observer (also in PPE), and a designated removal area. Doffing needs to be a slow and deliberate process and must be performed in the correct sequence using a doffing checklist.

Let’s return to our original question. What about that stat intubation you were called to perform in the ICU?

Stat intubations are not to be attempted on Ebola patients by anesthesiologists until the physician has properly donned the Enhanced Precaution PPE outfit. This necessitates significant time. Full Enhanced Precaution PPE precautions are mandated regardless of an emergency status or acute deterioration in patient status. Fiberoptic bronchoscopes are not recommended as aerosolization will occur and adequate cleaning is difficult. All equipment brought into the patient’s room must remain there and will be unusable for an indefinite period of time. Due to the extended time necessary to properly don and doff Enhanced Precaution PPE, an intubation of an Ebola patient could potentially take ninety minutes or longer when accounting for proper donning and doffing procedures.

What about performing surgery and anesthesia on Ebola patients? Patients with severe active disease would not likely tolerate an operation due to the severity of their disease. Any decision to operate should weigh all risks and benefits, specifically the risk of death from the current severity of the Ebola disease, the risk of death from their surgical disease, and the risk of exposure to the operating room team against the likelihood of potential benefit of emergency surgery.

Every effort should be given to keeping the patient in their own isolation room, and moving surgical and anesthetic equipment to the bedside. If possible, all procedures should be performed in the patient’s room.  Every effort should be given to keeping the patient in their own isolation room and moving surgical and anesthetic equipment to the bedside.

If it’s not feasible to perform the procedure or surgery in the intensive care unit room, an operating room should be designated for the patient. Preferably, this operating room should be away from traffic flow, have an anteroom, and not be connected to a clean core.

Transportation to and from the operating room hallways near the designated operating room should be blocked off.  Adjacent operating rooms will be closed. Traffic flow must be limited to only essential personnel involved with the case. PPE must be donned prior to entering the patient’s room.

Recovery from anesthesia will occur in the operating room or the patient’s hospital room, and not in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU).

These are the recommendations regarding operating room anesthesia set-up:

  1. Drawers of the anesthesia machine should be emptied except for the bare minimum of supplies.
  2. All additional items from atop the machine removed.
  3. The drawers should not be accessed unless absolutely necessary.
  4. All paperwork/laminated protocols and non-essential items must be removed from the machine.
  5. The anesthesia cart should be removed from the room and will not be directly accessible once the patient enters.
  6. An isolation cart (stainless steel or other easily cleanable table) should be stocked with all anticipated medications, emergency medications, syringes, needles, I.V. fluids (multiple), I.V. supplies, arterial line supplies, tubing, suction catheters, NG tubes, endotracheal tubes of appropriate size, additional ECG electrodes, gauze, chlorhexidine or alcohol pads, saline flushes, an extra BP cuff, a sharps container, additional gloves, and any additional equipment and supplies which the anesthesia attending for the cases requests.

Once the patient enters the operating room, absolutely no entry or exit from the operating room will occur without following PPE protocols. As such, bathroom and personal needs should be attended to prior to transporting the patient.

These are recommendations from The American Society of Anesthesiologists Ebola Workgroup. American physicians hope the number of Ebola cases in the United States will approach zero. As anesthesiologists we hope we’ll never be called to intubate or perform anesthesia on a patient infected with Ebola, but we understand our commitment to care for the sick and injured, and we understand that we have an obligation to provide urgent medical care during disasters.

Every hospital in America is in the process of understanding and implementing the above procedures regarding the isolation and protection of healthcare providers from the Ebola virus. If an Ebola patient is admitted to your hospital, I refer you to the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity.

 

The most popular posts for laypeople on The Anesthesia Consultant include:

How Long Will It Take To Wake Up From General Anesthesia?

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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?

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 ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

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WHAT ONE QUESTION SHOULD YOU ASK TO DETERMINE IF A PATIENT IS ACUTELY ILL?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 3 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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What one question should you ask to determine whether a patient has a serious medical problem? What one question must you ask to determine whether urgent intervention is required?

Imagine this scenario: You’re an anesthesiologist giving anesthesia care in the operating room to your second patient of the day. The Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) nurse calls you regarding your first patient who is in the PACU following appendectomy. The nurse says, “Your patient Mr. Jones is still nauseated and very sleepy. I’ve medicated him with ondansetron and metoclopramide as ordered, but he’s still nauseated and sleepy.”

That one question would be: “What are his vital signs?”(This is a bit of a trick question, since you are asking not one question, but four or five. It’s as if you’re down to your last request from the Genie from Aladdin’s lamp, and you’re wishing for more wishes. As Robin Williams’ Genie character said in Disney’s Aladdin, “Three wishes, to be exact. And ixnay on the wishing for more wishes. That’s all. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, exchanges or refunds.” )

The traditional four vital signs are the blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature. For anesthesiologists, surgeons, emergency room physicians, and ICU doctors, the fifth vital sign is the oxygen saturation or O2 sat. Some publications tout the pain score (on a 1-10 scale) as a fifth vital sign. While I subscribe to the pain score’s importance, it’s of less value in most acute care situations than the O2 saturation.

Let’s return to the patient scenario. You ask the nurse, “What are the patient’s vital signs?”

The nurse answers, “His heart rate is 48, his blood pressure is 88/55, his O2 sat is 100, and his respiratory rate is 16.”

You answer, “His heart rate is too low and so is his blood pressure. Let’s give him 0.5 mg atropine IV now.”

Five minutes later the nurse calls back. The heart rate increased to 72 and the blood pressure is 110/77. The patient’s symptoms resolved as the vital signs normalized.

Let’s look at a second scenario. You drop off a 48-year-old hysterectomy patient in the PACU. The patient is awake, and her initial vital signs are BP 120/64, pulse 100, respirations 18, and O2 saturation 99%. You return to the operating room to initiate care for your next patient for a laparoscopy. Thirty minutes later, the PACU nurse calls you to report your first patient has increasing abdominal discomfort. Her repeat vital signs are: BP 110/80, pulse 130, respirations 26, and O2 saturation 99%. You’re concerned an intra-abdominal complication is brewing. Five minutes later, the nurse reports a third set of vitals. The patient’s heart rate continues to rise to 140. Her blood pressure is now 82/40, her respirations are 30, and her skin has become cold and moist to the touch. She’s unable to speak coherently and is losing consciousness. You can not leave the patient you are anesthetizing, but you call a fellow anesthesiologist to evaluate the patient in person, and prepare her for emergent re-operation.

The patient’s initial vital signs were stable, but the downward trend of her vital signs were a harbinger of the serious complication. Eventually the symptoms of abdominal pain and decreasing consciousness appeared, and confirmed the diagnosis of intra-abdominal hemorrhage and impending shock. The increased heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and increased respiratory rate were red flags early on.

Abnormal vital signs can indicate that a patient is acutely ill. Equally important to the value of each vital sign is the temporal trend in the vital signs. A vital sign trend increasing or decreasing from the normal range can validate that the patient is becoming acutely ill.

You may be thinking, why is Dr. Novak telling me vital signs are important? Everybody know vital signs are, well … vital.

My message to you is to seek out the vital signs, all of them, as essential clues in all patients.

As anesthesiologists, we spend our entire intraoperative clinical career staring at a patient’s vital signs on a video screen. When the blood pressure goes up, we act. When the blood pressure goes down, we act. When the heart rate goes up, we act, and when the heart rate goes down, we act. When oxygen saturation trends downward, we act. Because most intraoperative patients are unconscious, the patient’s verbal history—the traditional clues regarding acute illness—are unavailable. We can not ask our patient questions to determine whether vital sign changes are associated with symptoms of chest pain, shortness of breath, or neurologic deficits. We’re accustomed to treating patients by normalizing their vital signs.

Other healthcare providers lack this perspective. Nurses and non-acute-care physicians such as family practitioners and internists can fill a patient’s history chock full of other details so thick that the vital signs are buried. The five or six vital sign numbers are often obscured in pages of text. Most physician and nursing notes in an electronic medical record (EMR) are lengthy, and are many are copied and pasted from previous encounters. Each patient interview is a quiz bowl of medical history answers. The five or six vital sign numbers are a needle in the haystack of a modern medical history. The EMR in a clinic or a hospital can serve to worsen this plight, as vital signs are recorded by nurses and entered into nursing documents on the computer, and treating physicians may have to dig to find the correct page that lists vital signs. One possible benefit of an EMR is a proposed safety system that requires, for any abnormal vital sign entered into the computer, the nurse to document they have verbally informed a physician of that abnormal value. This system would assure that abnormal values are never ignored, and that an MD will assess whether further diagnostic or therapeutic steps need to be taken.

Ferret out the vital signs. In my career as a clinical anesthesiologist and anesthesia expert witness, I can’t recall one significant complication that wasn’t foretold by an increased or decreased heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, or temperature, a decreased O2 saturation, or an increased pain score.

Keep your eye on the vitals, and keep your patients out of trouble.

 

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 ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

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SHOULD PHYSICIANS BE TESTED FOR DRUGS AND ALCOHOL?

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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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An 60-year-old man has a heart attack in the middle of an emergency abdominal surgery at 11:00 pm and dies two hours later. Should the anesthesiologist submit to a drug test to seek out alcohol or drug ingestion that could have made her performance impaired?

Discussion: In the 2012 movie Flight, Denzel Washington stars as a commercial airline pilot addicted to alcohol and cocaine, who crashes his airplane while he is intoxicated. Analogies between aviation and anesthesia are commonplace. Both involve takeoffs, landings, and varying cruising times between the two. Both are generally quite safe, but on occasion disastrous accidents occur.

Pilots are required to submit to random drug testing and to testing following accidents. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated drug and alcohol testing of safety-sensitive aviation employees in the Omnibus Transportation Employees Testing Act of 1991 to help protect the public and keep the skies safe.

Proposition 46 was a 2014 California legal initiative that proposed similar random drug testing of physicians and drug testing following critical sentinel events. Prop 46 was on the ballot for the November 2014 general election, and was soundly defeated. This proposition was noteworthy for bundling the drug-testing proposal with an additional proposal that would increase the maximum pain and suffering malpractice reward from $250,000 per case to $1,100,000 per case. Prop 46 was funded and supported by trial lawyers who sought to raise the ceiling on pain and suffering awards they could win in medical malpractice suits in California.

This malpractice award increase proposed by trial lawyers was viewed as a money grab, and was unpopular with voters. Because of concerns with increasing malpractice costs and health care costs, Prop 46 was defeated.

But what if Prop 46 had solely been about drug-testing physicians? Would it have a better chance of passing? I have no crystal ball, but my guess is that yes, it would have had a better chance of passing. According to the September 13, 2014 edition of the Los Angeles Times, the component of Prop 46 that required random drug and alcohol testing of doctors was popular among those surveyed: 68% of likely voters were in favor of it, while 25% were opposed.

In the August 1, 2014 issue of the New York Times, Adam Nagourney wrote “At a time when random drug testing is part of the job for pilots, train operators, police officers and firefighters—to name a few—one high-profile line of work has managed to remain exempt: doctors. That may be about to change. California would become the first state to require doctors to submit to random drug and alcohol tests under a measure to appear on the ballot this November. The proposal, which drew approval in early focus groups, was inserted as a sweetener in a broad initiative pushed by trial lawyers that also includes an unrelated measure to raise the state’s financial cap on medical malpractice awards for the first time since 1975, to $1.1 million from $250,000.”

The same New York Times article states, “Backers of Proposition 46 have begun putting out a steady stream of news releases about cases involving doctors with a history of drug and alcohol abuse…. ‘It’s crucial: I can’t believe we haven’t done this already,’ said Arthur L. Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University. ‘But the idea that we wouldn’t be screening our surgeon, our anesthesiologist or our oncologist when we are going to screen our bus drivers and our airline pilots strikes me as ethically indefensible.’” In the same article, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, opines that there should be random drug testing across the medical profession, given the access in hospitals to controlled substances. “I don’t think that a carve-out when it comes to the medical field is sensible public policy,” he said. “No one should be above suspicion or below suspicion. I think we all need to play by similar rules.”

In a recent commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr. Julius Pham of Johns Hopkins wrote, “Patients and their family members have a right to be protected from impaired physicians…. Why is there such a difference among high-risk industries, which all pledge to keep the public safe? First, medicine is underregulated compared with other industries. The fiduciary patient-physician relationship is generally considered to be governed by the profession, not to be tampered with by regulatory bodies. While some state and individual health system regulations exist, they tend to be weak. Second, self-monitoring is the essence of medical professionalism. Peer review is the accepted modality to identify physicians with impaired performance. Most states now have a designated physician health program to detect and assist potentially impaired physicians before those physicians cause patients harm. However, these programs vary in their mandate, authority, reporting requirements, and activities. For instance, California has the largest number of US physicians, but its physician health program was recently discontinued. In states without proactive programs, it seems, by default, that patient harm has to occur before a review process occurs. In many cases, an overwhelming amount of data (i.e., harmed patients) must be available before a hospital or state initiates an investigation.”

Dr. Pham goes on to say, “What might a model of physician impairment regulation look like? First, mandatory physical examination, drug testing, or both may be considered before a medical staff appointment. This already occurs in some hospitals and has been successful in other industries. Second, a program of random alcohol-drug testing could be implemented. Random testing is required for most federal employees and has been successfully implemented in several medical settings. Random testing in the military has resulted in a decrease in illicit drug use. Third, a policy for routine drug-alcohol testing could be initiated for all physicians involved with a sentinel event leading to patient death. Fourth, a national hospital regulatory/accrediting body could establish these standards to maintain consistency across states.”

It’s estimated that approximately 10% to 15% of all healthcare professionals misuse drugs or alcohol at some time during their career. Although rates of substance abuse and dependence are no different than those in the general population, the stakes are higher because healthcare professionals are caregivers responsible for the general health and well-being of our population. It’s known that specialties such as anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and psychiatry have higher rates of drug abuse, possible due to the stress level associated with these specialties, the baseline personalities of these healthcare providers, and easy access to drugs in these specialties.

As physicians, do we have any compelling arguments to deflect the notion of MD’s being drug tested? Physicians decry the intrusion into their privacy. There is the ethical question whether the risk of patient injury by the 10% of physicians who use drugs and/or alcohol merits that the other 90% of physicians should be subjected to drug testing. There is also the specter of false-positive tests, which could wreak havoc with a doctor’s reputation. The details of any proposed drug and alcohol screening programs will be crucial, and any screening program will require careful consideration of a physician’s rights and privacy.

Two prominent hospitals—Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio—implemented random urine drug testing in their anesthesia residency teaching departments. A 2005 survey by the Cleveland Clinic estimated that 80 percent of anesthesiology residency training programs reported problems with drug-impaired doctors, and an additional 19 percent reported a death from overdose. “The problem is that we are exposed to, and we have the use of, very highly addictive and potent medications,” said Dr. Michael G. Fitzsimons, administrator for the substance abuse program of the department of anesthesia and critical care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Gregory B. Collins, section head of the Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center, at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, said, “The first thing you often realize in these cases, it’s a kid dead in the bathroom with a needle in his arm.” Dr. Arnold Berry, an anesthesiologist and a member of the Committee on Occupational Health of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, said estimates of anesthesiologists who are addicted to medication range from only 1 to 2 percent. “The most recent study in training programs suggests the (addiction) rate has stayed the same for 20 years,” he said. Dr. Berry said the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) has decided to use other tactics to stave off addiction, rather than recommending urine testing. The ASA is implemented a “wellness initiative” to help anesthesiologists deal with stressors in their lives.

While doctors and organized medicine may delay the notion of drug testing for themselves, public opinion and lawmakers may lead the way toward making physicians “pee in the cup.” Citizens don’t want their airline pilots, firemen, and police officers under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and patients don’t want their doctors under the influence of alcohol or drugs either.

Our patients always come first. It will be an arduous task for MD’s to forever oppose a mandate for clean and sober physicians. Hugh Laurie was a fascinating character as the opiate-popping junkie doctor in “House,” but what patient wants the TV persona of Dr. Gregory House at their bedside?

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

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Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

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HERBAL MEDICINES, SURGERY, 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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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 surgery for an ACL reconstruction two days from now? Do you cancel surgery and stop the herbal medicines, or should you proceed?

My goal is to give you practical advice on how to proceed in the real world of anesthesia and surgical practice. We all know herbal medicines are out there. Do they matter? What is the evidence that herbal medicines affect surgical outcomes in an adverse way?

Many commonly used herbal medicines have side effects that affect drug metabolism, bleeding, and the central nervous system. In 2002 35% of Americans used complementary alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, and visits to CAM practitioners exceeded those to American primary care physicians (Tindle et al: Trends in use of complementary and alternative medicine by US adults: 1997-2002. Altern Ther Health Med 2005; 11:42). CAM practitioners include homeopathic medicine, meditation, art, music, or dance therapy, herbal medicines, dietary supplements, chiropractic manipulation, osteopathic medicine, massage, and acupuncture.

The finest review of herbal medicines and anesthesia is Chapter 33 in Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, authored by Ang-Lee, Yuan, and Moss. The authors write, “Many patients fail to volunteer information regarding herb and alternative medicine pills unless they are specifically asked about herbal medication use. Scientific knowledge in this area is still incomplete. There are no randomized, controlled trials that have evaluated the effects of prior herbal medicine use on the period immediately before, during and after surgery.” They go on to say, “preoperative use of herbal medicines has been associated with adverse perioperative events,” and “Because herbal medicines are classified as dietary supplements, they are not subject to preclinical animal studies, premarketing controlled clinical trials, or postmarketing surveillance. Under current law, the burden is shifted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prove products unsafe before they can be withdrawn from the market.”

The authors reviewed nine herbal medicines that have the greatest impact on perioperative patient care: echinacea, ephedra, garlic, Ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava, saw palmetto, St. John’s wort, and valerian. These nine pills represent 50% of the herbal medicines sold in the United States.

The same authors published a paper entitled “Herbal Medicines and Perioperative Care.” (JAMA 2001; 286:208). The following table is reproduced from that journal article, and describes relevant effects, perioperative concerns, and recommendations for eight of the most common herbal medicines:

Echinacea
Boosts immunity. Allergic reactions, impairs immune suppressive drugs, can cause 
immune suppression when taken long-term, could impair wound 
healing. Discontinue as far in advance as possible, especially for transplant patients or those with liver dysfunction.

Ephedra (ma huang) Increases heart rate, increases blood pressure. Risk of heart attack, arrhythmias, stroke, interaction with other drugs, kidney stones. Discontinue at least 24 hours before surgery.

Garlic (ajo)
Prevents clotting. Risk of bleeding, especially when combined with other drugs that inhibit clotting. Discontinue at least 7 days before surgery.

Ginko (duck foot, maidenhair, silver apricot). Prevents clotting. Risk of bleeding, especially when combined with other drugs that inhibit clotting. Discontinue at least 36 hours before surgery.

Ginseng
Lowers blood glucose, inhibits clotting. Lowers blood-sugar levels. Increases risk of bleeding. Interferes with warfarin (an anti-clotting drug). Discontinue at least seven days before surgery.

Kava (kawa, awa, intoxicating pepper). Sedates, decreases anxiety. May increase sedative effects of anesthesia. Risks of addiction, tolerance and withdrawal unknown. Discontinue at least 24 hours before surgery.

St. John’s wort (amber, goatweed, Hypericum, klamatheweed). Inhibits re-uptake of neuro-transmitters (similar to Prozac). Alters metabolisms of other drugs such as cyclosporin (for transplant patients), warfarin, steroids, protease inhibitors (vs HIV). May interfere with many other drug.s Discontinue at least five days before surgery.

Valerian
Sedates Could increase effects of sedatives. Long-term use could increase the amount of anesthesia needed. Withdrawal symptoms resemble Valium addiction If possible, taper dose weeks before surgery. If not, continue use until surgery. Treat withdrawal symptoms with benzodiazepines.

In their chapter in Miller’s Anesthesia, Ang-Lee, Yuan, and Moss recommend that, “In general, herbal medicines should be discontinued preoperatively. When pharmacokinetic data for the active constituents in an herbal medication are available, the timeframe for preoperative discontinuation can be tailored. For other herbal medicines, 2 weeks is recommended. However, in clinical practice because many patients require nonelective surgery, are not evaluated until the day of surgery, or are noncompliant with instructions to discontinue herbal medications preoperatively, they may take herbal medicines until the day of surgery. In this situation, anesthesia can usually proceed safely at the discretion of the anesthesiologist, who should be familiar with commonly used herbal medicines to avoid or recognize and treat complications that may arise.”

The American Society of Anesthesiologists have no official standards or guidelines on the preoperative use of herbal medications. Public and professional educational information released by the American Society of Anesthesiologists suggest that herbals be discontinued at least 2 to 3 weeks before surgery.

To return to our original question, what do you do when your otherwise healthy 50-year-old female patient has been taking gingko, kava, and ginseng up to two days prior to her ACL reconstruction surgery? Gingko can cause increased bleeding, kava can cause increased sedation, and ginseng can cause decreased blood sugars and increased bleeding. You discuss the predicament with the patient’s surgeon. He’s not concerned that a possible increased risk of bleeding will affect this knee surgery. You decide the increased level of sedation and the possible decreased blood sugar risks are not prohibitive. (If you were worried, you could cut back slightly on the amount of central nervous system depressant drugs you utilize, and also run a 5% dextrose solution in the patient’s IV.)

An alternative choice would be to cancel the surgery for 2 weeks while the patient remains herb-free. The surgeon asks you, “Is there any data that postponing the surgery for two weeks will decrease the complication rate?”

You answer honestly and say, “There is no data. The American Society of Anesthesiologists suggests that herbals be discontinued at least 2 to 3 weeks before surgery.”

The surgeon says, “I want to do the case tomorrow. There’s no data compelling me to delay for two weeks. I accept whatever increased bleeding risk there may be. I’ve never had a patient have a bleeding complication from a knee surgery.”

You proceed with the surgery the next day. The patient does well, and has no complications.

Surveys estimate that:
a) 22% to 32% of patients undergoing surgery use herbal medications (Tsen LC, et al: Alternative medicine use in presurgical patients. Anesthesiology 2000; 93:148);
b) 90% of anesthesiologists do not routinely ask about herbal medicine use (McKenzie AG: Current management of patients taking herbal medicines: A survey of anaesthetic practice in the UK. Eur J Anaesthesiol 2005; 22:597); and
c) more than 70% of patients are not forthcoming about their herbal medicine use during routine preoperative assessment (Kaye AD, et al: Herbal medications: Current trends in anesthesiology practice—a hospital survey. J Clin Anesth 2000; 12:468).

The frequent use of herbal medicines in perioperative patients is real. How big a problem is it? Nobody knows. How frequently does one of your patients have an unexpected problem of increased bleeding, increased sedation, decreased blood sugar, unexpected cardiac arrhythmia or angina, or decreased immune function?

For an ACL reconstruction in a healthy patient, gingko, kava, and ginseng may pose little risk. For a craniotomy on a 70-year-old with coronary artery disease and diabetes, gingko, kava, and ginseng bay pose an increased risk, and warrant postponing the surgery for 2 weeks after holding the herbal medicines.

My advice is to take a careful history of herb medicine use from your patients, know (or look it up if you don’t remember) the potential side effects of each herbal medicine, and then on a case-by-case basis decide if it really matters if the surgery should be cancelled for 2 weeks.

That’s what doctors do. That’s what anesthesia consultants do.

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

SUCCINYLCHOLINE: VITAL DRUG OR OBSOLETE DINOSAUR?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 6 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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Succinylcholine: vital drug or dinosaur? Succinylcholine (sux) has the wonderful advantage of rendering a patient paralyzed in less than a minute, and the discouraging disadvantage of a long list of side effects that make the drug problematic.

succinylcholine_chloride_10_med-21

A vial of succinylcholine

I would never begin an anesthetic without succinylcholine being immediately available. No other muscle relaxant supplies as rapid an onset of action and as short a duration of action. An intravenous dose of 1 mg/kg of succinylcholine brings complete paralysis of the neuromuscular junction at 60 seconds, and recovery to 90% of muscle strength in 9 – 13 minutes. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 29, Pharmacology of Muscle Relaxants and Their Antagonists). If a patient has an acute airway disaster on induction such as laryngospasm or pulmonary aspiration, no drug enables emergency endotracheal intubation as quickly as succinylcholine. That said, I never use succinylcholine unless I have to. The drug has too many side effects and rocuronium is often a better choice. For an elective anesthetic on a patient who has fasted and has an empty stomach, one almost never needs to use succinylcholine. If you do use sux, you are exposing your patient to the following side effects:

1. Myalgias. Your patient complains to you the following day, “Doc, I feel like I was run over by a truck.” Because the majority of anesthetics are currently done on outpatients, and because you do not personally interview these patients the following day, you won’t be aware of the degree of muscle pain you’ve induced by using the depolarizing relaxant succinylcholine. Published data quantitates the incidence of post-succinylcholine myalgia as varying from 0.2 % to 89% (Brodsky JB, Anesthesiology 1979; 51:259-61), but my clinical impression is that the number is closer to 89% than it is to 0.2%. Myalgias aren’t life-threatening, but if you ever converse with your patient one day after succinylcholine and they complain of severe muscle aches, you’ll wish you’d chosen another muscle relaxant if possible.
2. Risk of cardiac arrest in children. Succinylcholine carries a black box warning for use in children. Rare hyperkalemia and ventricular arrhythmias followed by cardiac arrest may occur in apparently healthy children who have an occult muscular dystrophy. The black box warning on succinylcholine recommends to “reserve use in children for emergency intubation or need to immediately secure the airway.”
3. Hyperkalemia, with an average increase of 0.5 mEq in potassium concentration after intravenous succinylcholine injection.
4. Cardiac arrest in patients with a history of severe trauma, neurologic disease or burns. There’s a risk of cardiac arrest with succinylcholine use in patients with severe burns, major trauma, stroke, prolonged immobility, multiple sclerosis, or Guillian-Barré syndrome, due to an up-regulation of acetylcholine. The increase in serum potassium normally seen with succinylcholine can be greatly increased in these populations, leading to ventricular arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. There is typically no risk using succinylcholine in the first 24 hours after the acute injury.
5. Cardiac arrhythmias. Both tachy and bradycardias can be seen following the injection of succinylcholine.
6. Increase in intraocular pressure, a hazard when the eye is open or traumatized.
7. Increase in intragastric pressure, a hazard if gastric motility is abnormal or the stomach is full.
8. Increase in intracranial pressure, a hazard with head injuries or intracerebral bleeds or tumors.
9. Malignant Hyperthermia (MH) risk. The incidence of MH is low. A Danish study reported one case per 4500 anesthetics when triggering agents are in use (Ording H, Dan Med Bull, 43:111-125), but succinylcholine is the only injectable drug which is a trigger for MH, and this is a disincentive to use the drug routinely.
10. Prolonged phase II blockade. Patients who have genetically abnormal plasma butyrylcholinesterase activity have the risk of a prolonged phase II succinylcholine block lasting up to six hours instead of the expected 9 – 13 minutes. If you’ve ever had to stay in the operating room or post-anesthesia recovery room for hours with a ventilated patient after their surgery ended because your patient incurred prolonged blockade from succinylcholine, you won’t forget it, and you’ll hope it never happens again.

What does a practicing anesthesiologist use instead of succinylcholine? Rocuronium.

A 0.6 mg/kg intubating dose of the non-depolarizing relaxant rocuronium has an onset time to maximum block of 1.7 minutes and a duration of 36 minutes. The onset time can be shortened by increasing the dose to a 1.2 mg/kg, a dose which has an onset time to maximum block of 0.9 minutes and a duration of 73 minutes. These durations can be shortened by reversing the rocuronium blockade as soon as one twitch is measured with a neuromuscular blockade monitor. Thus by using a larger dose of rocuronium, practitioners can have an onset of acceptable intubation conditions at 0.9 X 60 seconds = 54 seconds, compared to the 30 seconds noted with succinylcholine, without any of the 10 above-listed succinylcholine side effects. The duration of rocuronium when reversed by neostigmine/glycopyrrolate can be as short as 20 – 25 minutes, a time short enough to accommodate most brief surgical procedures.

Now that sugammadex is commercially available, we can reverse rocuronium blockade in seconds, making rocuronium shorter in duration than succinylcholine.

Here is a list of surgical cases once thought to be indications for using succinylcholine, which I would argue are now better served by using a dose of rocuronium followed by early reversal with sugammadex:

1) Brief procedures requiring intubation, such as bronchoscopy or tonsillectomy.
2) Procedures which require intubation plus intraoperative nerve monitoring, such as middle ear surgery.
3) Procedures requiring intubation of obese and morbidly obese patients who appear to have no risk factors for mask ventilation.
4) Procedures requiring full stomach precautions and cricoid pressure, in which the patient’s oxygenation status can tolerate 54 seconds of apnea prior to intubation. This includes emergency surgery and trauma patients. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 72, Anesthesia for Trauma) discusses the induction of anesthesia and endotracheal intubation for emergency patients who are not NPO and may have full stomachs. Either succinylcholine or rocuronium can be used, with succinylcholine having the advantage of a quicker onset and the 1.2 mg/kg of rocuronium having the advantage of lacking the 10 side effects listed above. The fact that succinylcholine takes 9 – 13 minutes to wear off makes it riskier than rocuronium, which can be reversed in seconds by sugammadex. Waiting for 9 minutes for a return to spontaneous respirations after succinycholine would be associated with severe hypoxia.

On the other hand, succinylcholine is the sole recommended muscle relaxant for:

1) Cesarean sections. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 69, Anesthesia for Obstetrics) still recommends thiopental and succinylcholine for Cesarean sections that require general anesthesia, and I would be loath to disagree with our specialty’s Bible.
2) Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression. Miller’s Anesthesia (Chapter 79, Anesthesia at Remote Locations) recommends partial muscle relaxation during ECT, and recommends small doses of succinylcholine (0.5 mg/kg) to reduce the peripheral manifestations of the seizure and to prevent musculoskeletal trauma to the patient.
3) Urgent intubation or re-intubation in a patient when every second counts, e.g. a patient who is already hypoxic. A subset of this indication is the patient who is being mask-induced and becomes hypoxic and requires intramuscular succinylcholine injection.
4) Laryngospasm either during mask induction or post-extubation, in which the patient requires urgent paralysis to relax the vocal cords.

In conclusion, most indications for muscle relaxation are better handled by using the non-depolarizing drug rocuronium rather than succinylcholine. However, because of the four recommended uses for succinylcholine listed in the previous paragraph, none of us would ever practice anesthesia without a vial of succinylcholine in our drawer for immediate availability.

I try very, very hard to minimize my use of succinylcholine, and so should you. But to answer our original question… succinylcholine is still a vital drug and not a dinosaur at all.

 

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?

 

 

 

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

HOW TO SCREEN OUTPATIENTS PRIOR TO SURGERY

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 4 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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Screening prior to outpatient surgery is important. Over 70% of elective surgeries in the United States are ambulatory or outpatient surgeries, in which the patient goes home the same day as the procedure. There are increasing numbers of surgical patients who are elderly, obese, have sleep apnea, or who have multiple medical problems. How do we decide which 70% of surgical candidates are appropriate for outpatient surgery, and which are not?

Since 2002 I’ve been the Medical Director at a busy Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) in Palo Alto, California. ASC Medical Directors are perioperative physicians, responsible for the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative management of ambulatory surgery patients. Our surgery center is freestanding, distanced one mile from Stanford University Hospital. The hospital-based technologies of laboratory testing, a blood bank, an ICU, arterial blood gas measurement, and full radiology diagnostics are not available on site. It’s important that patient selection for a freestanding surgery center is precise and safe.

The topic of Ambulatory Anesthesia is well reviewed in the textbook Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 78, Ambulatory (Outpatient) Anesthesia. With the information in this chapter as a foundation, the following 7 points are guidelines I recommend in the preoperative consultation and selection of appropriate outpatient surgery patients:

  1. The most important factor in deciding if a surgical case is appropriate is not how many medical problems the patient has, but rather the magnitude of the surgical procedure. A patient may have morbid obesity, sleep apnea, and a past history of congestive heart failure, but still safely undergo a non-invasive procedure such as a hammertoe repair. Conversely, if the patient is healthy, but the scheduled surgery is an invasive procedure such as resection of a mass in the liver, that surgery needs to be done in a hospital.
  2. Because of #1, an ASC will schedule noninvasive procedures such as arthroscopies, head and neck procedures, eye surgeries, minor gynecology and general surgery procedures, gastroenterology endoscopies, plastic surgeries, and dental surgeries. What all these scheduled procedures have in common is that the surgeries (a) will not disrupt the patient’s airway, breathing, or cardiac physiology in a major way, and (b) will not cause excessive pain requires inpatient intravenous narcotics.
  3. One must screen patients preoperatively to identify individuals who have serious medical problems. Our facility uses a comprehensive preoperative telephone interview performed by a medical assistant, two days prior to surgery. The interview documents age, height, weight, Body Mass Index, complete review of systems, list of allergies, and prescription drug history. All information is entered in the patient’s medical record at that time.
  4. Each surgeon’s office assists in the preoperative screening. For all patients who have (a) age over 65, (b) obstructive sleep apnea, (c) cardiac disease or arrhythmia history, (d) significant lung disease, (e) shortness of breath or chest pain, (f) renal failure or hepatic failure, (g) insulin dependent diabetes, or (h) significant neurological abnormality, the surgery office is required to obtain medical clearance from the patient’s Primary Care Provider (PCP).    This PCP clearance note concludes with two questions: 1) Does the patient require any further diagnostic testing prior to the scheduled surgery? And 2) Does the patient require any further therapeutic measures prior to the scheduled surgery?
  5. For each patient identified with significant medical problems, the Medical Director must review the chart and the Primary Care Provider note, and confirm that the patient is an appropriate candidate for the outpatient surgery. The Medical Director may telephone the patient for a more detailed history if indicated. On rare occasions, the Medical Director may arrange to meet and examine the patient prior to the surgical date.
  6. Medical judgment is required, as some ASA III patients with significant comorbidities are candidates for trivial outpatient procedures such as gastroenterology endoscopy or removal of a neuroma from a finger, but are inappropriate candidates for a shoulder arthroscopy or any procedure that requires general endotracheal anesthesia.
  7. What about laboratory testing? Per Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 78, few preoperative lab tests are indicated prior to most ambulatory surgery. We require a recent ECG for patients with a history of hypertension, cardiac disease, or for any patient over 65 years in age. If this ECG is not included with the Primary Care Provider consultation note, we perform the ECG on site in the preoperative area of our ASC, at no charge to the patient. All diabetic patients have a fasting glucose test done prior to surgery. No electrolytes, hematocrit, renal function tests, or hepatic tests are required on any patient unless that patient’s history indicates a specific reason to mandate those tests.

Utilizing this system, cancellations on the day of surgery are infrequent—well below 1% of the scheduled procedures. The expense of and inconvenience of an Anesthesia Preoperative Clinic are eliminated.

What sort of cases are not approved? Here are examples from my practice regarding patients/procedures who are/are not appropriate for surgery at a freestanding ambulatory surgery center:

  1. A 45-year-old patient with moderately severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is scheduled for a UPPP (uvulopalatalpharyngoplasty). DECISION: NOT APPROPRIATE. Reference: American Society of Anesthesiologist Practice Guidelines of the Perioperative Management of Patients with OSA (https://www.asahq.org/coveo.aspx?q=osa). For airway and palate surgery on an OSA patient, the patient is best observed in a medical facility post-surgery. For any surgery this painful in an OSA patient, the patient will require significant narcotics, which place him at risk for apnea and airway obstruction post-surgery.
  2. A morbidly obese male (Body Mass Index = 40) is scheduled for a shoulder arthroscopy and rotator cuff repair. DECISION: NOT APPROPRIATE. Obesity is not an automatic exclusion criterion for outpatient surgery. Whether to cancel the case or not depends on the nature of the surgery. A shoulder repair often requires significant postoperative narcotics. The intersection of morbid obesity and a painful surgery means it’s best to do the case in a hospital. One could argue that this patient could be done with an interscalene block for postoperative analgesia and then discharged home, but I don’t support this decision. If the block is difficult or ineffective, the anesthesiologist has a morbidly obese patient requiring significant doses of narcotics, and who is scheduled to be discharged home. If this surgery had been a knee arthroscopy and medial meniscectomy it could be an appropriate outpatient surgery, because meniscectomy patients have minimal pain postoperatively.
  3. An 18-year-old male with a positive family history of Malignant Hyperthermia is scheduled for a tympanoplasty. DECISION: APPROPRIATE. A trigger-free general total-intravenous anesthetic with propofol and remifenantil can be given just as safely in an ASC as in a hospital.
  4. A 50-year-old 70-kilogram male with a known difficult airway (ankylosing spondylitis) is scheduled for endoscopic sinus surgery. DECISION: NOT APPROPRIATE. In our ASC, for safety reasons, we have advanced airway equipment including a video laryngoscope and a fiberoptic laryngoscope. Despite our equipment, a patient with a known difficult airway is best scheduled for surgery in a hospital setting.
  5. An 80-year-old woman with shortness of breath on exertion is scheduled for a bunionectomy. DECISION: NOT APPROPRIATE. Although foot surgery is not a major invasive procedure, any patient with shortness of breath is inappropriate for ASC surgery. The nature of the dyspnea needs to be determined and remedied prior to surgery or anesthesia of any sort.
  6. A 6-year-old female born without an ear is scheduled for a 6-hour ear graft and reconstruction. DECISION: APPROPRIATE. With modern general anesthetic techniques utilizing sevoflurane and propofol, patients awake promptly. Even after long anesthetics, if the surgery is not painful, patients are usually discharged in stable condition within 60 minutes.

There are infinite combinations of patient comorbidities and types of surgeries. The decision regarding which scheduled procedures are appropriate and which are not is both an art and a science. The role of an anesthesiologist/Medical Director as the perioperative physician making these decisions is invaluable.

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

AVOIDING AIRWAY DISASTERS IN ANESTHESIA

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 8 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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Every anesthesia practitioner dreads airway disasters.  Anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists are airway experts, but anesthesia professionals are often the only person in the operating room capable of keeping a patient alive if the patient’s airway is occluded or lost. Hypoxia from an airway disaster can lead to brain damage within minutes, so there is little time for human error.

A fundamental skill is the ability to assess a patient’s airway prior to anesthesia. One must assess whether the patient will pose: 1) difficult bag-mask ventilation, 2) difficult supraglottic/laryngeal mask airway placement, 3) difficult laryngoscopy, 4) difficult endotracheal intubation, or 5) difficult surgical airway.

Of critical importance is #1) above, that is, recognizing the patient who will present difficult mask ventilation. Conditions that make for difficult bag-mask ventilation are uncommon, and usually can be detected during physical examination. Despite the importance of expertise in endotracheal intubation, I teach residents and trainees that the most important airway skill is bag-mask ventilation. Every year I encounter several patients who present unanticipated difficult intubations. In each of these patients, I’m able to mask ventilate the patient to keep them oxygenated while I try various strategies and techniques to successfully place an endotracheal tube or a laryngeal mask airway.

Most anesthesia airway disasters aren’t merely difficult intubations, but scenarios that are classified as “can’t intubate, can’t ventilate.” In these “can’t intubate, can’t ventilate” situations, the anesthesiology professional has only minutes to restore oxygenation to the patient or else the risk of permanent brain damage is very real.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists Difficult Airway Algorithm is a guide for anesthesia practitioners regarding how proceed in airway management. The algorithm is detailed, complex, comprehensive, and defines the standard of care in any medical-legal battle concerning hypoxic brain damage due difficult airway clinical cases. The algorithm is so detailed, complex, and comprehensive that some would say it’s impossible to remember every step in the acute occurrence of an airway disaster.

A simplified approach has been touted.

Dr. C. Philip Larson, Professor Emeritus, Anesthesia and Neurosurgery, Stanford University, and Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology at UCLA, and previous Chairman of Anesthesiology at Stanford, was one of my teachers and mentors for both endotracheal intubation and fiberoptic intubation. In a Letter to the Editor of the Stanford Gas Pipeline in May, 2013, Dr. Larson wrote, “there is no scientific evidence that anesthesia is safer because of the ASA Difficult Airway Algorithm.  While an interesting educational document, I question the daily clinical value of this algorithm, even in its most recent form (Anesthesiology 2013; 118:251-70). The ASA Difficult Airway Algorithm was developed by committee and has all the problems that result when done that way.  It is complex, diffuse, multi-dimensional, and all-encompassing such that it is not an instrument that one can easily adopt and practice in the clinical setting.”

Dr. Larson recommends a system of Plans A-D, a system he published in Clinical Anesthesiology, editors Morgan GE, Mikhail MS, Murray MJ, Lange Medical publication, 4th edition, 2006, pp 104-5, and in Current Reviews in Clinical Anesthesiology (2009; 30:61-72), and also in the Appendix on airway management and intubation in the newest edition of Anesthesiologists Manual of Surgical Procedures by Richard Jaffe et al (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 5th Edition, May 2014). An outline of the system is as follows:

A.  Plan A is direct laryngoscopy an intubation using a Miller or MacIntosh blade.

B.  If Plan A is unsuccessful, Plan B includes use of video laryngoscopy with a GlideScope or similar device.

C.  If Plan B is unsuccessful, Plan C is placement of an LMA with intubation through that LMA using a fiberoptic bronchoscope.

D.  “If Plans A-C fail,” Larson wrote in his Letter to the Editor of the Stanford Gas Pipeline in May, 2013, “one needs Plan D.  The first and perhaps the most prudent option is to cancel the proposed operation, terminate the anesthetic, and wake the patient up. The operation would be rescheduled for another day, and at that time an awake fiberoptic intubation technique would be used.  Alternatively, if the operation cannot be postponed, then the surgeon should be informed that a surgical airway (i.e.: tracheostomy) must be performed before the planned operation can commence.  To date, utilization of Plan D because of failure of Plans A-C has not occurred.”

Dr. Larson wrote that the airway skills in Plan A – C should be practiced regularly on patients with normal airways. I agree with Dr. Larson that in managing difficult airways, a practitioner needs a short list of procedural skills that he or she is expert at rather that a large array of procedures that they rarely use (such as the alternative intubation techniques using light wands or blind nasal techniques, or invasive airway procedures such as retrograde wires passed through the cricothyroid membrane or transtracheal jet ventilation through a catheter). It’s wise for anesthesiologists to regularly hone their techniques of video laryngoscopy (Plan B) and fiberoptic intubation via an LMA (Plan C) on patients with normal airways, to remain expert with these skills.

Regarding Plan B, an important advance is the availability of portable, disposable video laryngoscopes such as the Airtraq, a guided video intubation device. In my career I sometimes work in solo operating room suites distant from hospitals. In these settings, the operating room is usually not be stocked with an expensive video scope such as the GlideScope, the C-MAC, or the McGrath 5. I carry an Airtraq in my briefcase, and if the need for Plan B arises I am prepared to utilize video laryngoscopy at any anesthetizing location. I suggest the practice of carrying an Airtraq to any anesthesiologist who gives general anesthetics in remote locations.

Regarding emergency surgical rescue airway management, Dr. Larson recently published a Letter to the Editor in the American Society of Anesthesiologists Newsletter, February 2014, entitled, Ditch the Needle – Teach the Knife. In this letter, Dr. Larson wrote:

“in life-threatening airway obstruction, … an emergency cricothyrotomy is much quicker, easier, safer and more effective than any needle-based technique. I can state with confidence that there is no place in emergency airway management for needle-based attempts to establish ventilation. It should be deleted from the ASA Difficult Airway Algorithm. I have participated in seven cricothyrotomies in emergency airway situations, and all of the patients left the hospital without any neurological injury or complications from the cricothyrotomy. The risk-benefit ratio is markedly in favor the knife technique…. With a knife, or scissors, one cuts quickly either vertically or horizontally below the thyroid cartilage and there is the cricothyroid membrane or tracheal rings. The knife is inserted into the trachea and turned 90 degrees, and an airway is established. At that point, a small tube of any type can be inserted next to the knife. The knife technique is much safer because there is virtually nothing that one can harm by making an incision within two inches or less in the midline of the neck, and it can be performed in less than 30 seconds. In contrast, the needle is fraught with complications, including identifying the trachea, making certain that the needle is entirely in the trachea and does not move ( to avoid subcutaneous emphysema when an oxygen source is established), establishing a pressurized oxygen delivery system (which will take more than five minutes even in the most experienced circumstances), and avoiding causing a tension pneumothorax… I know of multiple cases of acute airway obstruction where the needle technique was attempted, and in all cases the patients died. I know of no such cases when a cricothyrotomy was used as the primary treatment of acute airway obstruction.”

A final note on the awake intubation of patients with a difficult airway: In hindsight in any difficult airway case, one often wishes they had secured an endotracheal tube prior to the induction of general anesthesia. The difficult problem is deciding prior to a case which patient has such a difficult airway that the induction of general anesthesia should be delayed until after intubation. In anesthesia oral board examinations it may be wise to say you would perform an awake intubation on a difficult airway patient rather than risk the “can’t intubate, can’t ventilate” scenario the examiner is probably poised to skewer you with. In medical malpractice lawsuits, plaintiff expert witnesses in anesthesia airway disaster cases often testify that a brain-dead patient’s life would have been saved if only the anesthesiologist had performed awake intubation rather than inducing general anesthesia first and then losing the airway. The key question is: how does one decide which patient needs an awake intubation? As an anesthesia practitioner, if you performed awake intubations on one out of 50 cases because you were worried about a difficult airway, you would delay operating rooms and surgeons multiple times per year because of your caution. You will not be popular if you do this. In my clinical practice and in the practice of the excellent Stanford anesthesiologists I work with, the prevalence of awake intubation is very low. I estimate most anesthesiologists perform between zero and two awake intubations per year. The most common indications include patients with severe ankylosing spondylitis of the cervical spine, congenital airway anomalies, and severe morbid obesity. Dr. Larson wrote in his Letter to the Editor of the Stanford Gas Pipeline in May, 2013, “I do anesthesia for most of the patients with complex head and neck tumors, and I find fewer and fewer indications for awake fiberoptic intubation. As long as the lungs can be ventilated by bag-mask or LMA, which is true for almost all sedated patients, Plan C is easier, quicker and safer than awake fiberoptic intubation both for the patient and the anesthesia provider.  In experienced hands, Plan C can be completed in less than 5 minutes, and one can become proficient by practicing in normal patients. I have done hundreds of Plan C’s, many under difficult circumstances, without a single failure or complication.  Obviously, no technique will encompass every conceivable airway problem, but mastering Plans A-D and awake oral and nasal fiberoptic intubation will meet the needs of anesthesia providers in almost all circumstances.”

May you never experience the  emotional trauma of an airway disaster. Become an expert in bag-mask ventilation, always have access to a video laryngoscope or an Airtraq, and consider  Dr. Larson’s  Plan A-D system, described in detail in the Appendix on airway management and intubation in the newest edition of Anesthesiologists Manual of Surgical Procedures by Richard Jaffe et al (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 5th Edition, May 2014).

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

THE TOP 11 DISCOVERIES IN THE HISTORY OF 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
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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 anesthesia was a recent development in 1846. For thousands of years most surgical procedures were accompanied by severe pain. The only strategies available to blunt pain were to give patients alcohol or opium until they were stuporous.

In the 21st Century, modern anesthesiologists utilize dozens of medications and apply sophisticated high-tech medical equipment. How did our specialty advance from prescribing patients two shots of whiskey to administering modern anesthetics?

In chronologic order, my choices for the 11 most important advances in the history of anesthesia follow below. I’ve included comments to expound on the impact of each discovery.

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1846. THE DISCOVERY OF ETHER AS A GENERAL ANESTHETIC. The first public demonstration of general anesthesia occurred at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. William Morton, a local dentist, utilized inhaled ether to anesthetize patient Edward Abott.  Dr. John Warren then painlessly removed a tumor from Abbott’s neck.  Comment: This was the landmark discovery. From this point forward, painless surgery became possible.

1885. THE DISCOVERY OF INJECTABLE COCAINE AND LOCAL ANESTHESIA.  Cocaine was the first local anesthetic. Dr. William Halsted of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore first injected 4% cocaine into a patient’s forearm and concluded that cocaine blocked sensation, as the arm was numb below but not above the point of injection. The first spinal anesthetic was performed in 1885 when Dr. Leonard Corning of Germany injected cocaine between the vertebrae of a 45-year-old man and caused numbness of the patient’s legs and lower abdomen. Comment: The discovery of local anesthesia gave doctors the power to block pain in specific locations. Improved local anesthetics procaine (Novocain) and lidocaine were later discovered in 1905 and 1948, respectively.

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1896. THE DISCOVERY OF THE HYPODERMIC NEEDLE, THE SYRINGE, AND THE INJECTION OF MORPHINE. Alexander Wood of Scotland invented a hollow needle that fit on the end of a piston-style syringe, and used the syringe and needle combination to successfully treat pain by injections of morphine. Comment: The majority of anesthetic drugs today are injected intravenously. Such injections would be impossible without the invention of the syringe.

1905. DISCOVERY OF THE MEASUREMENT OF BLOOD PRESSURE BY BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF. Dr. Nikolai Korotkov of Russia described the sounds produced during auscultation with a stethoscope over a distal portion of an artery as a blood pressure cuff was deflated. These Korotkoff sounds resulted in an accurate determination of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Comment: Anesthesiologists monitor patients repeatedly during every surgery. A patient’s vital signs are the heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and temperature. It would be impossible to administer safe anesthesia without blood pressure measurement. Low blood pressures may be evidence of anesthetic overdose, excessive bleeding, or heart dysfunction. High blood pressures may be evidence of inadequate anesthetic depth, or uncontrolled hypertensive heart disease.

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1913. DISCOVERY OF THE CUFFED ENDOTRACHEAL BREATHING TUBE. Sir Ivan Magill of England developed a technique of placing a breathing tube into the windpipe, and endotracheal anesthesia was born. Dr. Chevalier Jackson of Pennsylvania developed the first laryngoscope used to visualize the larynx and insert an endotracheal tube. Drs. Arthur Guedel and Ralph Waters at the University of Wisconsin discovered the cuffed endotracheal tube in 1928. This advance allowed the use of positive-pressure ventilation into a patient’s lungs. Comment: Surgery within the abdomen and chest would be impossible without controlling the airway and breathing with a tube in the trachea. As well, the critical care resuscitation mantra of Airway-Breathing-Circulation would be impossible without an endotracheal tube.

1934. THE DISCOVER OF THIOPENTAL AND INJECTABLE BARBITURATES. Dr. John Lundy of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota introduced the intravenous anesthetic sodium thiopental into anesthetic practice. Injecting Pentothal became the standard means to induce general anesthesia. Pentothal provided a more pleasant method of going to sleep than inhaling pungent ether. Comment: This was a huge breakthrough. Almost every modern anesthetic begins with the intravenous injection of an anesthetic drug. (Propofol has now replaced Pentothal)

1940. THE DISCOVERY OF CURARE AND INJECTABLE MUSCLE RELAXANTS. Dr. Harold Griffith of Montreal, Canada injected the paralyzing drug curare during general anesthesia to induce muscular relaxation requested by his surgeon. Although the existence of curare was known for many years (it was an arrow poison of the South American Indians), it was not used in surgery to deliberately cause muscle relaxation until this time. Comment: Paralyzing drugs are necessary to enable the easy insertion of endotracheal tubes into anesthetized patients, and paralysis is also essential for many abdominal and chest surgeries.

1950’s. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POST-ANESTHESIA CARE UNIT (PACU) AND THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT (ICU). The shock and resuscitation units organized during World War II and the Korean War resulted in efficient care for the sick and wounded. After the wars, PACU’s and ICU’s were natural extensions of these battlefield inventions. Comment: In the PACU, a patient’s airway, breathing, and circulation are observed, monitored, and treated immediately following surgery. PACU’s decrease post-operative complications. In the ICU, Airway-Breathing-Circulation management perfected in the operating room is extended to critically ill patients who are not undergoing surgery.

1956. THE DISCOVERY OF HALOTHANE, THE FIRST MODERN INHALED ANESTHETIC. British chemist Charles Suckling synthesized the inhaled anesthetic halothane. Halothane had significant advantages over ether because of halothane’s more pleasant odor, higher potency, faster onset, nonflammability, and low toxicity. Halothane gradually replaced older anesthetic vapors, and achieved worldwide acceptance. Comment: Halothane was the forerunner of isoflurane, desflurane, and sevoflurane, our modern inhaled anesthetics. These drugs have faster onset and offset, cause less nausea, and are not explosive like ether. The discovery of halothane changed inhalation anesthesia forever.

1983. THE DISCOVERY OF PULSE OXIMETRY MONITORING. The Nellcor pulse oximeter, co-developed by Stanford anesthesiologist Dr. William New, was the first commercially available device to measure the oxygen saturation in a patient’s bloodstream. The Nellcor pulse oximeter had the unique feature of lowering the audible pitch of the pulse tone as saturation dropped, giving anesthesiologists a warning that their patient’s heart and brain were in danger of low oxygen levels. Comment: The Nellcor changed patient monitoring forever. Oxygen saturation is now monitored before, during, and after surgery. Prior to Nellcor monitoring, the first sign of low oxygen levels was often a cardiac arrest. Following the invention of the Nellcor, oxygen saturation became the fifth vital sign, along with pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and temperature.

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1986.  END-TIDAL CO2 MONITORING. In 1986 the American Society of Anesthesiologists mandated continual end-tidal carbon dioxide analysis be performed using a quantitative method such as capnography, from the time of endotracheal tube/laryngeal mask placement until extubation/removal or initiating transfer to a postoperative care location. The detection and monitoring of carbon dioxide gave immediate feedback whenever ventilation of the lungs was failing. For example, an endotracheal breathing tube placed in the esophagus instead of the tracheal would yield zero (or close to zero) carbon dioxide. The end-tidal CO2 device alarms immediately, the anesthesiologist recognizes the problem, and fixes it at once. The development of pulse oximetry and end-tidal CO2 monitoring were concurrent, and because of these twin discoveries, anesthesia care became markedly safer after the 1980’s

These are the top 11 discoveries in the history of anesthesia as I see them. What will be the next successful invention to advance our specialty?  A superior pain-relieving drug? A better inhaled anesthetic? An improved monitor to insure patient safety? Top scientists and physicians worldwide are working this very day to join this list. Good luck to each of them.

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

HOW RISKY IS A TONSILLECTOMY?

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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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 surgery intended to help treat her obstructive sleep apnea. After the bleeding she lapsed into a coma. Three days later she was declared brain-dead.

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How could this happen?

Behind circumcision and ear tubes, tonsillectomy is the third most common surgical procedure performed on children in the United States. 530,000 tonsillectomies are performed children under the age of 15 each year. Tonsillectomy is not a minor procedure. It involves airway surgery, often in a small child, and often in a child with obstructive sleep apnea. The surgery involves a risk of bleeding into the airway. The published mortality associated with tonsillectomy ranges from 1:12,000 to 1:40,000. 

Between 1915 and the 1960’s, tonsillectomy was the most common surgery in the United States, done largely to treat chronic throat infections. After the 1970’s, the incidence of tonsillectomies dropped, as pediatricians realized the procedure had limited success in treating chronic throat infections. The number of tonsillectomies has increased again in the last thirty years, as a treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Currently 90 percent of tonsillectomies are performed to treat OSA. Only 1 – 4 % of children have OSA, but many of these children exhibit behavioral problems such as growth retardation, poor school performance, or daytime fatigue. The American Academy of Otolaryngology concluded that “a growing body of evidence indicates that tonsillectomy is an effective treatment for sleep apnea.”

Tonsillar and adenoid hypertrophy are the most common causes of sleep-disordered breathing in children. Obstructive sleep apnea is defined as a “disorder of breathing during sleep characterized by prolonged upper airway obstruction and/or intermittent complete obstruction that disrupts normal ventilation during sleep.” (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th edition, 2009, Chapter 82).

In OSA patients, enlarged tonsils can exacerbate loud snoring, decrease oxygen levels, and cause obstruction to breathing. Removal of the tonsils can improve the diameter of the breathing passageway. Specific diagnosis of OSA can be made with an overnight sleep study (polysomnography), but applying this test to large populations of children is a significant expense. Currently only about 10 percent of otolaryngologists request a sleep study in children with sleep-disordered breathing prior to surgery (Laryngoscope 2006;116(6):956-958). In our surgical practice in Northern California, most pediatricians and otolaryngologists forego the preoperative overnight sleep study if the patient has symptoms of obstructed sleep, confirmed by a physical exam that reveals markedly enlarged tonsils.

Every tonsillectomy requires general anesthesia, and anesthesiologists become experts in the care of tonsillectomy patients. Prior to surgery the anesthesiologist will review the chart, interview the parent(s), and examine the child’s airway. Most children under the age of 10 will be anesthetized by breathing sevoflurane via an anesthesia mask, which is held by the anesthesiologist. Following the child’s loss of consciousness, the anesthesiologist will place an intravenous (IV) catheter in the child’s arm. The anesthesiologist then inserts a breathing tube into the child’s windpipe, and turns the operating table 90 degrees away so the surgeon has access to operate on the throat. The surgeon will move the breathing tube to the left and right sides of the mouth while he or she removes the right and left tonsils. (note: children older than the age of 10 will usually accept an awake placement of an IV by the anesthesiologist, and anesthetic induction is accomplished by the IV injection of sleep drugs including midazolam and propofol, rather than by breathing sevoflurane via an anesthesia mask).

The child remains asleep until the tonsils are removed, and all bleeding from the surgical site is controlled. The anesthesiologist then discontinues general anesthetic drugs and removes the breathing tube when the child awakens. Care is taken to assure that the airway is open and that breathing is adequate. Oxygen is administered until the child is alert. Tonsillectomy is painful, and intravenous opioid drugs such as fentanyl or morphine are commonly administered to relieve pain. The opioids depress respiration, and monitoring of oxygen levels and breathing is routinely done until the child leaves the surgical facility.

Most tonsillectomy patients have surgery as an outpatient and are discharged home within hours after surgery. Prior to the 1960’s patients were hospitalized overnight routinely post-tonsillectomy. In 1968 a case series of 40,000 outpatient tonsillectomies with no deaths was reported, and performance of tonsillectomy on an outpatient basis became routine after that time. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th edition, 2009, Chapter 33).

Published risk factors for postoperative complications after tonsillectomy include: (1) age younger than 3 years; (2) evidence of OSA; (3) other systemic disorders of the heart and lungs); (4) presence of airway abnormalities; (5) bleeding abnormities; and (6) living a long distance from an adequate health care facility, adverse weather conditions, or home conditions not consistent with close observation, cooperativeness, and ability to return quickly to the hospital. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th edition, 2009, Chapter 82).

The incidence of post-tonsillectomy bleeding increases with age. In a national audit of more than 33,000 tonsillectomies, hemorrhage rates were 1.9% in children younger than 5 years old, 3% in children 5 to 15 years old, and 4.9% in individuals older than 16. The return to the operating room rate was 0.8% in children younger than 5 years old, 0.8% in children 5 to 15 years old, and 1.2% in individuals older than 16. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th edition, 2009, Chapter 75).

Primary bleeds usually occur within 6 hours of surgery. Hemorrhage is usually from a venous or capillary bleed, rather than from an artery. Complications occur because of hypovolemia (massive blood loss), the risk of blood aspiration into the lungs, or difficulty with replacing the breathing tube should emergency resuscitation be necessary. Early blood loss can be difficult to diagnose, as the blood is swallowed and not seen. Signs suggesting hemorrhage are an unexplained increasing heart rate, excessive swallowing, pale skin color, restlessness, sweating, and swelling of the airway causing obstruction. Low blood pressure is a late feature. (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th edition, 2009, Chapter 75).

What happened to 13-year-old Jahi McMath in Oakland following her tonsillectomy? We have no access to her medical records, and all we know is what was reported to the press. The following text was published in the 12/21/2013 Huffington Post:

After her daughter underwent a supposedly routine tonsillectomy and was moved to a recovery room, Nailah Winkfield began to fear something was going horribly wrong.

Jahi was sitting up in bed, her hospital gown bloody, and holding a pink cup full of blood.

“Is this normal?” Winkfield repeatedly asked nurses.

With her family and hospital staff trying to help and comfort her, Jahi kept bleeding profusely for the next few hours then went into cardiac arrest, her mother said.

Despite the family’s description of the surgery as routine, the hospital said in a memorandum presented to the court Friday that the procedure was a “complicated” one.

“Ms. McMath is dead and cannot be brought back to life,” the hospital said in the memo, adding: “Children’s is under no legal obligation to provide medical or other intervention for a deceased person.”

In an interview at Children’s Hospital Oakland on Thursday night, Winkfield described the nightmarish turn of events after her daughter underwent tonsil removal surgery to help with her sleep apnea.

She said that even before the surgery, her daughter had expressed fears that she wouldn’t wake up after the operation. To everyone’s relief, she appeared alert, was talking and even ate a Popsicle afterward.

But about a half-hour later, shortly after the girl was taken to the intensive care unit, she began bleeding from her mouth and nose despite efforts by hospital staff and her family.

While the bleeding continued, Jahi wrote her mother notes. In one, the girl asked to have her nose wiped because she felt it running. Her mother said she didn’t want to scare her daughter by saying it was blood.

Family members said there were containers of Jahi’s blood in the room, and hospital staff members were providing transfusions to counteract the blood loss.

“I don’t know what a tonsillectomy is supposed to look like after you have it, but that blood was un-normal for anything,” Winkfield said.

The family said hospital officials told them in a meeting Thursday that they want to take the girl off life support quickly.

“I just looked at the doctor to his face and I told him you better not touch her,” Winkfield recalled.

Despite the family’s description of the surgery as routine, the hospital said in a memorandum presented to the court Friday that the procedure was a “complicated” one.

 

Despite the precaution of hospitalizing Jahi McMath post-tonsillectomy, when her bleeding developed it seems the management of her Airway-Breathing-Circulation did not go well. I’ve attended to bleeding post-tonsillectomy patients, and it can be a harrowing experience. It can be an extreme challenge to see through the blood, past the swollen throat tissues post-surgery, and locate the opening to the windpipe so that one can insert the breathing tube needed to supply oxygen to the lungs. Assistance from a second anesthesiologist is often needed. The surgeon will be unable to treat or control severe bleeding until an airway tube is in place.  Difficult intubation and airway management can lead to decreased oxygen levels and ventilation, jeopardizing oxygen delivery to the brain and heart. If severe bleeding is unchecked and transfusion of blood cannot be applied swiftly, the resulting low blood pressure and shock can contribute to the lack of oxygen to a patient’s brain.

A bleeding tonsillectomy patient can be an anesthesiologist’s nightmare.

 

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?

 

 

 

 

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*
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*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

READING IN THE OPERATING ROOM

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 1 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)

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 find him tapping on an iPad and reading in the operating room. What do you do?

Discussion:  Is it OK for the anesthesiologist to be reading in the operating room? Is it OK for him to be referencing the Internet? Answering email? Sending text messages on his smartphone? Or should that anesthesiologist be staring transfixed at the monitor screen for hour after hour, maintaining flawless vigilance?

In the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation Newsletter Summer 1995 edition, Dr. Matthew Weinger discussed the issue of reading in the operating room. He emphasized that there were no scientific data on the impact of reading on anesthesia provider vigilance or task performance. He cited data that anesthesiologists are ‘idle’ during 40% of routine cases. He asserted that “anesthesia providers read during these idle periods to prevent boredom, and that boredom was a problem of information underload, insufficient work challenge, and under-stimulation…Adding tasks to a monotonous job may decrease boredom and dividing attention among several tasks (time-sharing) may, in some circumstances, actually improve monitoring performance.” Weinger concluded that, “in the absence of controlled studies on the effect of reading in the operating room on anesthesia vigilance and task performance, no definitive or generalizable recommendations can be made. The decision must remain a personal one based on recognition of one’s capabilities and limitations. From a broader perspective, the anesthesia task including associated equipment must be optimized to minimize boredom and yet not be so continuously busy as to be stressful.”

In the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation Newsletter, Fall 2004 edition, Dr. Terri Monk opined that reading in the OR seriously compromised patient safety. She was opposed to reading for the following reasons:

  1. Reading diverts one’s attention from the patient.
  2. The patient is paying for the anesthesiologist’s undivided attention, and most well-informed patients want to know if the anesthesiologist plans to turn over a portion of their anesthesia care to a nurse or resident. If we are obliged to honestly answer that concern, then, shouldn’t we also be obliged to inform the patient that we plan to read during a portion of the anesthetic?
  3. Reading is medico-legally dangerous. Dr. Monk wrote, “Any plaintiff’s attorney would love to have a case in which the circulating nurse would testify, ‘Dr. Giesecke was reading when the cardiac arrest occurred. Yep, he was reading the Wall Street Journal. You know he has a lot of valuable stocks that he must keep track of.’ It is possible that if anesthesiologists informed their malpractice carriers that they routinely read during cases, the companies might raise premiums or cancel malpractice coverage.”
  4. The practice of reading in the OR projects a negative public image. Nurses, technicians, and surgeons may think the anesthesiologist is less professional.

A 2009 study looked at 172 selected general anesthetic cases in an academic medical center. Vigilance was assessed by the response time to a randomly illuminated alarm light. Reading was observed in 35% of cases. In the 60 cases that involved reading, providers read during 25  +/- 3% of maintenance time but not during induction or emergence. Vigilance to the alarm light was no different between readers and non-readers.

Miller’s Anesthesia (7th Edition, 2009, chapter 6) states, “Although it is indisputable that reading can distract attention from patient care, there are no data at present to determine the degree to which reading does distract attention, especially if the practice is confined to low-workload portions of a case. Furthermore, many anesthetists pointed out that reading as a distraction is not necessarily any different from many other kinds of activities not related to patient care that are routinely accepted, such as idle conversation among personnel.”

A 2012 study concluded there were no data concerning the effects of the use of laptops and smartphones in the operating theatre on anesthetist performance, and that these devices were now in frequent use. They discussed the use of laptops and smartphones in regards to the two pertinent issues of vigilance and multitasking. There were data that in some circumstances the addition of a secondary task (i.e. using a laptop or smartphone) during periods of low stimulation can improve vigilance and overall task performance, but the workload and the nature of the secondary task were critical. The authors made the following points regarding the nature of anesthesia work and the factors that affect performance in anesthesia:

  1. Anesthesia involves multi-tasking and the maintenance of situational awareness. Studies have shown that attending to a range of tasks simultaneously is a key characteristic of anesthetic practice, and that anesthetists are superior to non-anesthetists in performing additional tasks while monitoring patients.
  2. Anesthetists typically only glance at monitors. Covert observations of anesthetists in British Columbia revealed subjects spent less than 5% of their time observing the monitoring display. This was made up of brief glances (1.5 to 2 seconds duration) occurring 15 – 20 times during each 10-minute segment of time.
  3.    Anesthetic work is reduced during prolonged maintenance, potentially resulting in boredom and/or secondary activities being undertaken. The maintenance phase in some anesthetics (typically cases of longer duration, lower complexity and where the patient is stable) may be a time of low workload and infrequent task demands. In a study of 105 anesthesia clinicians, half reported being bored infrequently, but 90% admitted to occasional episodes of extreme boredom. Boredom can result in severely decreased vigilance if the anesthetist is suffering from sleep deprivation.
  4.    The authors concluded there was no evidence to support a blanket prohibition on the use of smartphones and laptops in the operating theatre, and there was good reason to avoid edicts that are not supported by solid evidence. They stated, “There is no doubt that reading or computer usage gives the appearance of being less attentive, even if there are no measurable effects on routine care…Computer and phone tasks that also require immediate responses appear to provide a greater risk than reading (whether from a book or screen). While boredom may be cognitively unpleasant, there is no evidence of anesthetist boredom (in the absence of sleep) harming patients.”

I recently attended the American Society of Anesthesiologists national convention in San Francisco. At the conclusion of the meeting, the ASA emailed me a full text edition of the Refresher Course lectures as an email attachment, in a format designed to be downloaded onto a computer. Like myself, more than 10,000 anesthesiologist attendees of the ASA meeting will now have access to the Refresher Course curriculum on their laptops or iPads. Will some of them read these Refresher Courses during the stable maintenance phases of anesthetics in their operating rooms? Perhaps.

Returning to the Clinical Case for Discussion above, what will you do about your colleague you discovered using his iPad in the operating room? My guess is, based on what has been published in the anesthesia literature, you’ll give him the bathroom break as intended, and say nothing about his use of the iPad in the operating room.

 

 

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?

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

HOW TO WAKE UP PATIENTS PROMPTLY FOLLOWING GENERAL ANESTHETICS

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 16 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Two patients arrive simultaneously in the recovery room following general endotracheal anesthetics. One patient is unresponsive and requires an oral airway to maintain adequate respiration. In the next bed, the second patient is awake, comfortable and conversant. How can this be? It occurs because different anesthetists practice differently. Some can wake up patients promptly, and some cannot.

Aldrete Score Calculator - Definition | Aldrete score chart

Does it matter if a patient wakes up promptly after general anesthesia? It does. An awake, alert patient will have minimal airway or breathing problems. When it’s time to walk away from your patient in the recovery room, you’ll worry less if your patient is already talking to you and has minimal residual effects of general anesthesia. Whether the surgery was a radical neck dissection, a carotid endarterectomy, a laparotomy, or a facelift, it’s preferable to have your patient as awake as possible in the recovery room.

What can you do to assure your patients wake up promptly? A Pubmed search will give you little guidance. There’s a paucity of data or evidence in the medical literature on how to wake patients faster. You’ll find data on ultra-short acting drugs such as propofol and remifentanil. This data helps, but the skill of waking up a patient on demand is more an art than a science. Textbooks give you little advice. Anesthesiologist’s Manual of Surgical Procedures, (4th Edition, 2009), edited by Jaffe and Samuels, has an Appendix that lists Standard Adult Anesthetic Protocols, but there is little specific information on how to titrate the drugs to ensure a timely wakeup.

Based on 29 years of administering over 20,000 anesthetics, this is my advice on how to wake patients promptly from general anesthesia:

  1. Propofol. Use propofol for induction of anesthesia. You may or may not choose to infuse propofol during maintenance anesthesia (e.g. at a rate of 50 mcg/kg/min) but if you do, I recommend turning off the infusion at least 10 minutes before planned wakeup. This allows adequate time for the drug to redistribute and for serum propofol levels to decrease enough to avoid residual sleepiness.
  2. Sevoflurane. Sevoflurane is relatively insoluble and its effects wear off quickly when the drug is ventilated out of the lungs at the conclusion of surgery. I recommend a maintenance concentration of 1.5% inspired sevoflurane in most patients. I drop this concentration to 1% while the surgeon is applying the dressings. When the dressings are finished, I turn off the sevoflurane and continue ventilation to pump the sevoflurane out of the patient’s lungs and bloodstream. The expired concentration will usually drop to 0.2% within 5-10 minutes, a level at which most patients will open their eyes.
  3. Nitrous oxide. Unless there is a contraindication (e.g. laparoscopy or thoractomy) I recommend you use 50% nitrous oxide. It’s relatively insoluble, and adding nitrous oxide will permit you to utilize less sevoflurane. I recommend turning off nitrous oxide when the surgeon is applying the dressings at the end of the case, and turning the oxygen flow rate up to 10 liters/minute while maintaining ventilation to wash out the remaining nitrous oxide.
  4. Narcotics. Use narcotics sparingly and wisely. I see overzealous use of narcotics as a problem. Prior to inserting an endotracheal tube, it’s reasonable to administer 50 – 100 mcg of fentanyl to a healthy adult or 0 -50 mcg of fentanyl to a geriatric patient. A small dose serves to blunt the hemodynamic responses of tachycardia or hypertension associated with larynogoscopy and intubation. Bolusing 250 mcg of fentanyl prior to intubation is an unnecessary overdose. The use of ongoing doses of narcotics during an anesthetic depends on the amount of surgical stimulation and the anticipated amount of post-operative pain. You may administer intermittent increments of narcotic (I may give a 50-100 mcg dose of fentanyl every hour) but I recommend your final narcotic bolus be given no less than 30 minutes prior to the anticipated wakeup. Undesired high levels of narcotic at the conclusion of surgery contribute to oversedation and slow awakening. If your patient complains of pain at wakeup, further narcotic is titrated intravenously to control the pain. Your patient’s verbal responses are your best monitor regarding how much narcotic is needed. Your goal at wakeup should be to have adequate narcotic levels and effect, but no more narcotic than needed.
  5. Intra-tracheal lidocaine. I recommend spraying 4 ml of 4% lidocaine into the larynx and trachea at laryngoscopy prior to inserting the endotracheal tube. I can’t cite you any data, but it’s my impression that patients demonstrate less bucking on endotracheal tubes at awakening when lidocaine was sprayed into their tracheas. Less bucking enables you to decrease anesthetic levels further while the endotracheal tube is still in situ.
  6. Local anesthetics. Local anesthetics are your friends at the conclusion of surgery. If the surgeon is able to blunt post-operative pain with local anesthesia or if you are able to blunt post-operative pain with a neuroaxial block or a regional block, your patient will require zero or minimal intravenous narcotics, and your patient will wake up more quickly.
  7. Muscle relaxants. Use muscle relaxants sparingly. Nothing will slow a wakeup more than a patient in whom you cannot reverse the paralysis with a standard dose of neostigmine. This necessitates a delay in extubation until muscle strength returns. Muscle relaxation is necessary when you choose to insert an endotracheal tube at the beginning of an anesthetic, but many cases do not require paralysis for the duration of the surgery. When you must administer muscle relaxation throughout surgery, use a nerve stimulator and be careful not to abolish all twitch responses. Avoid long-acting paralyzing drugs such as pancuronium, as you will have difficulty reversing the paralysis if surgery concludes soon after you’ve administered a dose. Use rocuronium instead. Avoid administering a dose of rocuronium if you believe the surgery will conclude within the next 30 minutes—it may be difficult to reverse the paralysis, and this will delay wakeup.
  8. Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA). When possible, substitute an LMA for an endotracheal tube. Wakeups will be smoother, muscle relaxants are unnecessary, and narcotic doses can be titrated with the aim of keeping the patient’s spontaneous respiratory rate between 15- 20 breaths per minute.
  9. Temperature monitoring and forced air warming. Cold is an anesthetic. Strive to keep your patient normothermic by using forced air warming. If your patient’s core temperature is low, wakeup will be delayed.

10. Consider remaining in the operating room after surgery until your patient is awake enough to respond to verbal commands. This is my practice, and I recommend it for safety reasons. In the operating room you have all your airway equipment, drugs, and suction at your fingertips. If an unexpected emergence event occurs, you’re prepared. If an unexpected emergence event occurs in an obtunded patient in the recovery room, your resuscitation equipment will not be as readily available. If your patient is responsive to verbal commands in the operating room, your patient will be wakeful on arrival in the recovery room.

Is this protocol a recipe? Yes, it is. You’ll have your own recipe, and your ingredients may vary from mine. You may choose to administer desflurane instead of sevoflurane. You may choose sufentanil, morphine, or meperidine instead of fentanyl. My advice still applies. Use as little narcotic as is necessary, and try not to administer intravenous narcotic during the last 30 minutes of surgery. If you use a remifentanil infusion, taper the infusion off early enough so the patient is wakeful at the conclusion of surgery.

The principles I’ve recommended here are time-tested and practical. Follow these guidelines and you’ll experience two heartwarming scenarios from time to time:  1) Patients in the recovery room will ask you, “You mean the surgery is done already? I can’t believe it,” and 2) Recovery room nurses will ask you, “Did this patient really have a general anesthetic?  She’s so awake!”

Your chest will swell with pride, and you’ll feel like an artist. Good luck.

 

 

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?

 

 

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

 

LEARN MORE ABOUT RICK NOVAK’S FICTION WRITING AT RICK NOVAK.COM BY CLICKING ON THE PICTURE BELOW:

DSC04882_edited

 

 

HOW IS YOUR ANESTHESIA BILL CALCULATED?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 1 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)

How is your anesthesia bill calculated?

 

anesthesia billing

 

It depends. An anesthesiologist’s bill depends on several factors, including:

  1. The duration of the anesthesia care
  2. The complexity of the surgical procedure
  3. The insurance status of the patient

Let’s look at each of these factors in turn:

1. The duration of the anesthesia care.  Anesthesia provider bills are calculated by a simple formula:

Amount of Bill = (Number of Base Units + Number of Time Units) X the dollar value of a Unit.

Every anesthesia company assigns a monetary value to an anesthesia “Unit.” A “Unit” is a 15-minute length of time of anesthesia service. (The price of an anesthesia Unit varies. More on this topic later).

The total amount of an anesthesia bill depends largely on the duration of the anesthesia service, which depends on the duration of the surgery.

Anesthesia time begins when the anesthesia provider starts attending to the patient in the pre-operative area, and ends when the anesthesia provider transfers care to the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) nurse or to the intensive care unit (ICU) nurse following the surgery.

For most surgeries, a typical timeline involves:

10-15 minutes of anesthesia exam in the pre-operative area,

5 minutes of time transporting the patient to the operating room,

5-10 minutes time inducing anesthesia,

10–40 minutes of time positioning, prepping, and draping the patient,

the entire surgical duration,

5-15 minutes of time to wake the patient up,

5-10 minutes of time to transport the patient to the PACU or ICU,

and 5-10 minutes time to sign the patient over to the nurse’s care in the PACU or ICU.

In the PACU, the anesthesiologist is responsible for the patient’s vital signs, pain control, nausea therapy, and the timing of the patient’s discharge from the PACU, even though the anesthesia billing time concluded when he or she signed the patient’s care to the PACU nurse. Typically the anesthesia provider returns to the pre-operative area to meet the next patient at this time, and the billing time for the next patient commences when the anesthesia provider begins attending to the next patient.

2. The complexity of the scheduled surgical procedure. The Base Unit value for any anesthetic varies with the complexity of the scheduled surgery. The Base Unit value can be as low as 3 Units for a simple procedure such as a finger or a toe surgery, or as high as 25 Units for open-heart surgery.  The Base Unit values are cataloged in a publication called the ASA (American Society of Anesthesiologists) Relative Value Guide. The Base Unit value reflects the degree of work and risk involved in the anesthetic management for each type of surgery.

3. The insurance status of the patient. The United States government sets a cap on how much Medicare and Medicaid patients can be billed. The dollar value per anesthesia Unit is severely discounted for Medicare and Medicaid patients to a number as low as one-fourth to one-fifth the amount a non-Medicare or Medicaid patient is billed.

                                                                                                                                               

FURTHER DISCUSSION…

THE PRICE OF AN ANESTHESIA UNIT: The price of an anesthesia Unit is set by the billing anesthesiologist and his or her anesthesia company. The price tends to be higher in major metropolitan centers, lower in rural areas, and lowest for Medicare patients. The price of an anesthesia Unit may vary from as high as $140/Unit in a major metropolitan area to a low of $20/Unit for a Medicare or a Medicaid patient.

EXAMPLE: Let’s look at a sample bill for an elbow surgery. The Base Unit value for elbow surgery is 3 Units. The surgery time was 1 hour, but the total anesthesia time from pre-operative area to the PACU sign out was 1 hour and 45 minutes. One hour and 45 minutes equals 7 Time Units. Let’s assume a Unit value price of $90/Unit.

Using the formula above,

Amount of Bill = (Number of Base Units + Number of Time Units)  X  the dollar value of a Unit.

OR

Amount of Bill = (3 Units + 7 Units) X $90/Unit = 10 X 90 = $900.

Will the anesthesia provider collect $900? Most likely not. Insurance companies negotiate with physicians, and the result of such negotiations may result in significant discounts paid on Unit values compared to billed rates. If the anesthesia group has a signed contract with an insurance company, the agreed reimbursement may be $60/Unit, and the maximal allowed bill would be $600.

In addition, if your insurance coverage requires you to pay for 20% of the bill, the insurance company may only pay 80%, or $480, and you will be expected to pay $120. If the anesthesiology company does not have a contract with the insurance provider, the insurance company will reimburse an out-of-network amount, usually less than the full $900, and you may be responsible for the balance of the bill (unless the anesthesia company is willing to discount the bill under these circumstances).

There are advantages of growing old. If you’re a Medicare patient, your anesthesia bill may total only $200:

(3 Units + 7 Units) X $20/Unit = 10 X 20 = $200.

COSMETIC SURGERY: Insurance companies do not pay for plastic surgeries such as liposuction, breast implants, or facelifts. Patients must pay the surgeon, operating room, and anesthesia bills in advance. Most anesthesiologists discount their customary rates in return for cash prepayment.

THE FUTURE: The nature of anesthesia billing may change in the future to embrace a concept known as “bundled payments.” Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, outlines provisions for bundled payments to hospitals rather than the traditional fee-for-service reimbursements described above. In a bundled payment model, the medical team will receive a lump sum from the government (or from an insurance company) for a surgical procedure. The medical center and physicians will negotiate and decide how to divide up the money between the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and to the hospital (the hospital share will cover nurse salaries, technician salaries, supplies, and the overhead to run the hospital).

To date there is little data to support the advantage of bundled payments. The government hopes to save money by limiting what it pays out per procedure. Time will tell how prevalent this reimbursement model will be in the future of American healthcare economics.

When you buy retail goods, prices are available prior to purchase. With medical bills, you rarely know what the price of your medical care will be until you receive the bill weeks afterward. This is likely to change. There is momentum moving toward transparent pricing of medical fees, including listing of physician fees and facility fees prior to patient care. In the future you may have access to physician, hospital, and surgery center pricing to assist you in making your medical care choices.

SUMMARY: Your anesthesia bill will depend on how complex a surgery you are scheduled for, how long it takes to complete the procedure, and what kind of insurance coverage you have. Armed with this information, you may choose to contact your surgeon, the anesthesia company he or she works with, and your insurance company prior to your surgery to understand what your anesthesia bill is likely to be.

 

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?

 

 

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

ANESTHESIA FOR SPECIALTY SURGERIES

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 1 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)

This column is specifically for my non-medical layperson readers, and is a discussion of the different types of anesthesia for specialty surgeries. See below:

 

I.  CHILDBIRTH (OBSTETRIC ANESTHESIA):

Most obstetric anesthesia is for either vaginal delivery or for Cesarean sections.

Anesthesia for Vaginal Delivery:  Anesthesia for vaginal delivery is utilized to diminish the pain of labor contractions, while leaving the mother as alert as possible, with as muscle strength as possible, to be able to push the baby out at the time of delivery.  Anesthesia for labor and vaginal delivery is usually accomplished by epidural injection of the local anesthetics bupivicaine (brand name Marcaine) or ropivicaine.

is done by the injection of local anesthetic solution, with or without a narcotic medication, into the low back into the epidural space. Prior to beginning anesthesia, the anesthesiologist places monitors of blood pressure, electrocardiogram, pulse and oxygen saturation of the blood.

The word epidural translates to “outside the dura”. The dura is the outermost lining of the meninges covering the nerves of the spinal column. The epidural space is located with a needle by the anesthesiologist, and the appropriate anesthetic medications are injected.   Often, a tiny catheter is left in the epidural space, taped to the patient’s low back, to allow repeated doses of the medication to be given.  The catheter is removed after childbirth.

Anesthesia for Cesarean Section: Cesarean section is a surgical procedure in which the obstetrician makes an incision through the skin of the lower abdomen, and through the wall of the uterus, or womb, to extract the baby without the child requiring a vaginal delivery.  Anesthesia for Cesarean section is usually a spinal or an epidural anesthetic, which leaves the mother as alert as possible, while rendering surgical anesthesia to her abdomen and pelvis.  Spinal or epidural anesthesia is accomplished by injection of local anesthetics, with or without a narcotic medication, into the low back into the subarachnoid or the epidural space. The anesthesiologist remains present for the entire surgical procedure, to assure that the mother is comfortable and that all vital signs are maintained as close to normal limits as possible.

In a minority of cases, the anesthesia provider will administer a general anesthetic for Cesarean section surgery.  The most common indications for general anesthesia are (1) emergency Cesarean, when there is no time for a spinal or epidural block;  and (2) significant bleeding by the mother, leading to a low blood volume, which is an unsafe circumstance to administer a spinal or epidural block.  General anesthetics for Cesarean section carry an increased risk over spinal/epidural anesthesia, primarily because the mother is no longer able to breath on her own and maintain her own airway.

open heart surgery

II.  CARDIAC SURGERY/OPEN HEART SURGERY:

Open heart surgery requires specialized equipment.  Anesthesia for cardiac surgery is complex, and the following is a brief summary:  Prior to the surgery, the anesthesiologist inserts a catheter into the radial artery at the wrist, to monitor the patient’s blood pressure continuously, rather than relying on a blood pressure cuff.  This enables the anesthesiologist to fine-tune the blood pressure, never allowing it to be too high or too low for an extended period of time.  The anesthesiologist also inserts a catheter (a central venous catheter, or CVP catheter) into a large vein in the patient’s neck.  The anesthesiologist uses this catheter to monitor the pressure inside the heart, and also to administer infusions of potent medications into the central circulation to raise or lower the blood pressure, or to increase the heart’s pumping function.

After the patient is anesthetized, the anesthesiologist often inserts a Transesophageal Echocardiogram (TEE) probe into the patient’s mouth, down the esophagus, and into the stomach.  The TEE gives the anesthesiologist a two-dimensional image of the beating heart and the heart valves in real time, and enables him or her to adjust medications and fluid administration as needed to keep the patient stable.

For open heart surgery, once the chest is open, the cardiac surgeon inserts additional tubes into the veins and arteries around the heart, diverting the patient’s blood from the heart and lungs into a heart-lung machine located alongside the operating table.  During the time the patient is connected to the heart-lung machine, the patient’s heart can be stopped so that the surgeon can operate on a motionless heart.

When the surgeon has completed the cardiac repair, the heart is restarted, and the heart-lung machine is disconnected from the patient.

As the heart resumes beating, the anesthesiologist manages the drug therapy and intravenous fluid therapy to optimize the cardiac function.

III.  ANESTHESIA FOR NEUROSURGERY (BRAIN SURGERY):

Intracranial (brain) surgery requires exacting maintenance of blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory control.  Prior to the surgery, the anesthesiologist inserts a catheter into the radial artery at the wrist, to monitor the patient’s blood pressure continuously, rather than relying on a blood pressure cuff.  This enables the anesthesiologist to fine-tune the blood pressure, never allowing it to be too high or too low for an extended period of time.  The anesthesiologist also inserts a catheter (a central venous catheter, or CVP catheter) into a large vein in the patient’s neck.  The anesthesiologist uses this catheter to monitor the pressure inside the heart, and also to administer infusions of potent medications into the central circulation to raise or lower the blood pressure.

The anesthetic technique is designed to provide a motionless operating field for the surgeon.  After the anesthesiologist anesthetizes the patient, he or she inserts the endotracheal tube into the windpipe.  The patient is often hyperventilated, because hyperventilation causes the blood vessels in the brain to constrict, and makes the volume of the the brain decrease.  The relaxed brain affords the surgeon more room to dissect and expose brain tumors or aneurysms.

An important goal of the anesthetic is a quick wake-up at the conclusion of surgery, so that (1) normal neurological recovery of the patient can be confirmed, and (2) the patient is alert enough to  maintain their own airway and breathe on their own.  Most brain surgery patients spend at least one night in the intensive care unit (ICU) after surgery.

 

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?

 

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

HOW DOES THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST DECIDE WHAT DOSE OF ANESTHETIC TO GIVE A PATIENT?

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)

This column is directed to my non-medical layperson readers. How does an anesthesiologist decide what dose of anesthetic to administer to a patient? You are a 100-pound, 70-year-old woman. Your son is a 200-pound, 35-year-old man. Do you both require the same doses of general anesthetic if you each need to have your gall bladder removed?

No, you do not.

Anesthesiologists use several criteria to choose the correct dose for your anesthetic.

  • Your weight.      All intravenous anesthetic drugs, such as hypnotics (propofol, sodium pentothal), narcotics (morphine, Demerol, fentanyl), anxiolytics (Versed, Ativan), or muscle paralyzing drugs (rocuronium, vecuronium, succinylcholine) are dosed on a milligram-per-kilogram basis. If you weigh half as much as your neighbor, if all other factors are equal, then you will receive approximately half as many milligrams of the injectable medication as she will.
  • Your age.        Abundant research has demonstrated the relationship between age and anesthetic effect. Youthful patients require more milligrams-per-kilogram of body weight. A teenager may require twice the dose of an 80-year-old patient.
  • How stimulating the surgery is, and how much pain there will be postoperatively.          A non-painful surgery, such as the repair of a small tendon in a finger, will not require large doses of narcotics or pain relievers post-operatively. A painful surgery, such as on open abdominal procedure to remove a pancreatic or liver tumor, will require more narcotics and increased doses of anesthetics. If postoperative pain is blocked by local anesthetic injection in the surgical site or by a nerve block, a patient will require less general anesthetic medications.
  • The duration of the surgery.      An 8-hour surgery will require a longer exposure to more anesthetic drugs than a 1-hour surgery.
  • Your preoperative exposure to central nervous system depressants.      All else being equal, a patient who drinks 12 beers every day will require more anesthesia than a teetotaler who never drinks. A patient who is addicted to chronic prescription painkillers will require more anesthesia than a non-addict.

Inhaled anesthetics, such as sevoflurane, desflurane, isoflurane, or nitrous oxide, are administered in standard concentrations, independent of all the above factors except the patient’s age.  Inhaled anesthetics are mixed into vapor by an anesthesia machine which is connected to the your breathing system during the surgery. The anesthesia machine will usually be set to deliver either sevoflurane 1-2 %, desflurane 3 – 6 %, or isoflurane 0.8 – 1.5 %. The required concentration of these potent inhaled anesthetic decreases with age. The dose for teenager is approximately twice the dose required for a 90-year-old patient.

 

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?

 

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

LETHAL INJECTION AND THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST

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)

Lethal injection requires someone to administer anesthetic medications in high concentrations, without supporting breathing or cardiac function. This column discusses lethal injection and the anesthesiologist. In the 2011 movie The Lincoln Lawyer, Matthew McConaughey’s character, a criminal defense lawyer working in Los Angeles, taunts his client who is on trial for murder to tell the truth in order to “avoid the needle.”  The needle he is talking about is the specter of execution by lethal injection.

lethal injection and the anesthesiologist

Since 2006, there have been no death penalty executions by lethal injection in the state of California.  In February 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy D. Fogel blocked the execution of convicted murderer Michael Morales because of concerns that if the three-drug lethal injection combination was administered incorrectly, it could lead to suffering for the condemned, and potential cruel and unusual punishment.  The ruling arose from an injunction made by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which stated that an execution could only be carried out by a medical technician legally authorized to administer intravenous medications.  This led to a moratorium of capital punishment in California, as the state was unable to obtain the services of a licensed medical professional to carry out an execution.

The three intravenous drugs involved in lethal injection are (1) sodium thiopental, a barbiturate drug that induces sleep, (2) pancuronium, a drug that paralyzes all muscles, making movement and breathing impossible, and (3) potassium chloride, a drug that induces ventricular fibrillation of the heart, causing cardiac arrest.  The potential of cruel and unusual punishment can occur if the sodium thiopental does not reliably induce sleep, so that the individual to be executed is awake and aware when the paralyzing drug freezes all muscular activity.

How could sodium thiopental fail to induce sleep?  The lethal injection administered dose of sodium thiopental is always a massive dose, up to 3000 mg.  To compare, the usual dose of sodium thiopental administered by an anesthesiologist to begin a general anesthetic is 200 mg.  The 15-fold increase in the dose should insure lack of awareness, right?

Not necessarily.  What if the intravenous catheter or needle is incorrectly positioned, so that the drug does not enter the vein in a reliable fashion?  Is this a possibility?  It is.  If the catheter is not inserted by a trained medical professional, it’s possible that the catheter will be outside of the vein, and the intended medications will spill into the soft tissues of the arm.  The intended site of action of sodium thiopental is the brain.  To reach the brain, the drug must be correctly delivered into a vein.

Cases in which failure to establish or maintain intravenous access have led to executions lasting up to 90 minutes before the execution was complete.Thus, the role of a medical professional to insert the intravenous catheter and administer the lethal injection is critical.  The dilemma is that medical professionals are trained to save lives, not to execute people.  The Hippocratic Oath clearly states that physicians must “do no harm” to their patients.

The American Medical Association states, “A physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, should not be a participant in a legally authorized execution.”

The American Society of Anesthesiologists states, “Although lethal injection mimics certain technical aspects of the practice of anesthesia, capital punishment in any form is not the practice of medicine … The American Society of Anesthesiologists continues to agree with the position of the American Medical Association on physician involvement in capital punishment. The American Society of Anesthesiologists strongly discourages participation by anesthesiologists in executions.”

The American Nurses Association states, “The American Nurses Association is strongly opposed to nurse participation in capital punishment. Participation in executions is viewed as contrary to the fundamental goals and ethical traditions of the profession.”

Without a trained medical professional to administer the intravenous catheter and inject the drugs in a reliable fashion, the practice of lethal injection has stalled in the State of California.  The last prisoner executed by lethal injection in California was Clarence Ray Allen on January 17, 2006.

In 2010, a Riverside County judge scheduled the execution of Albert Greenwood Brown, after a California court lifted an injunction against capital punishment with the certification of new procedures.  The new procedures included the option of increasing the sodium thiopental dose to 5000 mg, and administering the drug alone without the pancuronium and potassium chloride.  (In this scenario, death would occur because the large dose of sodium thiopental would by itself induce both general anesthesia and the cessation of breathing, leading to death by lack of sufficient oxygen levels to the brain and heart.)  However, prior to the execution, the same Judge Jeremy D. Fogel halted the execution to permit time to determine whether the new injection procedures addressed defense arguments of cruel and unusual punishment.

An additional barrier to lethal injection arose in January 2011, as Hospira Corporation, the sole manufacturer of sodium thiopental, announced that they would stop making the anesthetic sodium thiopental, the key component in the drug cocktails used by 35 states for chemical executions.

Hospira had planned to shift production of thiopental from the U.S. to Italy, but Italian officials wanted assurances that the drug would not be used for lethal injections.  Hospira’s response was that while they “never condoned” the use of thiopental in executions, the company determined that it could not prevent corrections departments in the United States from obtaining the drug. “Based on this understanding, we cannot take the risk that we will be held liable by the Italian authorities if the product is diverted for use in capital punishment,” Hospira said in a statement.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists released a statement on January 21, 2011 condemning Hospira’s decision to cease manufacturing sodium thiopental. The American Society of Anesthesiologists “certainly does not condone the use of sodium thiopental for capital punishment, but we also do not condone using the issue as the basis to place undue burdens on the distribution of this critical drug to the United States. It is an unfortunate irony that many more lives will be lost or put in jeopardy as a result of not having the drug available for its legitimate medical use.”  According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists, thiopental is an important alternative for geriatric, neurologic, cardiovascular and obstetric patients “for whom the side effects of other medications could lead to serious complications.”

In current anesthetic practice in the U.S. and around the world, sodium thiopental is occasionally but rarely utilized in anesthetic or intensive care unit practice.  Propofol replaced sodium thiopental, as propofol is a shorter-acting drug with fewer side effects of post-operative sleepiness and nausea.

Propofol or other sedative drugs such as midazolam, Valium, etomidate, or methohexital could be used to replace sodium thiopental to carry out lethal injection, but the key issue of obtaining a trained medical professional to administer the drug still looms as a roadblock.

I recommend The Lincoln Lawyer as riveting entertainment, but when Matthew McConaughey urges the defendant to “avoid the needle” of lethal injection, you have to understand … it’s unlikely any anesthesiologist is ever going to assist in that execution.

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

LANDING THE ANESTHESIA PLANE: WHEN SHOULD YOU EXTUBATE THE TRACHEA?

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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

This column is for my readers who are anesthesia professionals. When should you extubate the trachea? Clinical Case for Discussion: You’re anesthetizing a 60-year-old woman for a thyroidectomy. The surgeon tells you, “If this woman bucks on the endotracheal tube on awakening it could cause a neck hematoma and damage my surgical closure. Can you extubate her deep?”

 

Discussion: The patient has a normal airway, and she is healthy and slender. You decide to comply with the surgeon’s request and remove the endotracheal tube (ET tube) at the end of surgery while the patient is still fully anesthetized. You turn off the nitrous oxide, allow the patient to breath 100% oxygen and 3% sevoflurane, and suction the patient’s throat. You deflate the cuff on the ET tube and remove the tube. Once the tube is withdrawn, you turn off all anesthetics. At this point the patient coughs and her mouth fills with yellow gastric contents. You suction the mouth again, but the patient develops upper airway obstruction. The oxygen saturation drops to 80%. Your diagnosis is laryngospasm. You attempt to apply continuous positive airway pressure with an anesthesia mask, but her oxygen saturation falls to 70%. Panicked, you inject 100 mg of IV succinylcholine to re-paralyze the patient, and you perform laryngoscopy and reintubate her. After the ET tube is replaced, the oxygen saturation returns to 100%. You suction through the lumen of the ET tube, and you find yellow gastric material inside the lungs. You diagnose aspiration.

After a 10½ hour flight from Seoul, Korea, an Asiana airplane crashed on landing at San Francisco Airport on July 6, 2013. Aviation and anesthesia have similarities. The takeoff and landing of an airplane, just as induction and emergence from anesthesia, are more complex events than piloting the middle of a plane flight or managing the maintenance phase of a long anesthetic.

The timing of the removal of the endotracheal tube at the end of an anesthetic requires skill and judgment. Does deep extubation ever make sense? During my first year after residency training, a gray-haired anesthesia attending at my new medical center told me, “Richard, in private practice you never extubate anyone deep.” Twenty-seven years later, I’m writing to convince you he was right.

Let’s define “deep extubation.” Per Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 50, “Extubation may be performed at different depths of anesthesia, with the terms ‘awake,’ ‘light,’ and ‘deep’ often being used. ‘Light’ implies recovery of protective respiratory reflexes and ‘deep’ implies their absence. ‘Awake’ implies appropriate response to verbal stimuli. ‘Deep’ extubation is performed to avoid adverse reflexes caused by the presence of the tracheal tube and its removal, at the price of a higher risk of hypoventilation and upper airway obstruction. Straining, which could disrupt the surgical repair, is less likely with ‘deep’ extubation. Upper airway obstruction and hypoventilation are less likely during ‘light’ extubation, at the price of adverse hemodynamic and respiratory reflexes.”

The medical literature describes deep extubation as extubating a patient who is still breathing 1.5 times the minimal alveolar concentration (MAC) of inhaled anesthetic. A 2004 study examined 48 children tracheally extubated while deeply anesthetized with 1.5 times the MAC of desflurane (Group D) or sevoflurane (Group S). No serious complications occurred in either group, and the time to discharge was not significantly different between groups. The study concluded that deep extubation of children can be performed safely with desflurane or sevoflurane. (Valley RD, Anesth Analg. 2003 May;96(5):1320-4, Tracheal extubation of deeply anesthetized pediatric patients: a comparison of desflurane and sevoflurane.)

In a prospective trial, 100 children age<16 years, each with at least one risk factor for perioperative respiratory adverse events (e.g. current or recent upper respiratory tract infection or asthma) were randomized to extubation under deep anesthesia or extubation when fully awake after tonsillectomy. There were no differences in respiratory adverse events (laryngospasm, bronchospasm, persistent coughing, airway obstruction, or desaturation <95%). Tracheal extubation in fully awake children was associated with a greater incidence of persistent coughing (60 vs. 35%, P = 0.028), however the incidence of airway obstruction relieved by simple airway maneuvers in children extubated while deeply anaesthetized was greater (26 vs. 8%, P = 0.03).

Seventy healthy patients between 2 and 8 yr of age who had elective strabismus surgery or tonsillectomy were randomly assigned to group 1 (awake extubation) or group 2 (anesthetized extubation). The incidence of airway-related complications such as laryngospasm, croup, sore throat, excessive coughing, and arrhythmias was not different between the two groups. The authors concluded that the anesthesiologist’s preference or surgical requirements may dictate the choice of extubation technique in otherwise healthy children undergoing elective surgery. (Patel RI, Anesth Analg. 1991 Sep;73(3):266-70. Emergence airway complications in children: a comparison of tracheal extubation in awake and deeply anesthetized patients).

In an informal poll of the private practice anesthesiologists at Stanford University, the incidence of deep extubation (i.e. patient extubated asleep while breathing >1.5 MAC of inhaled anesthetic) approached zero. Why do I and my colleagues avoid deep extubation? If you have a life-saving and life-preserving device such as an endotracheal tube safely in place in your patient, and your goal is to maintain the values of Airway, Breathing, and Circulation, why remove that life-preserving device prematurely without any evidence that such a removal is beneficial? Why leave your anesthetized patient with an unprotected airway?

I cannot cite you outcome data that shows awake extubation provides superior outcomes to deep extubation, but with modern short-acting anesthetics such as propofol, sevoflurane, and desflurane, a well-trained anesthesiologist can decrease anesthetic depth quickly and have their patient very awake within minutes after the conclusion of surgery. Per Miller’s Aesthesia, “Rapid recovery of consciousness shortens the at-risk time during extubation and may reduce morbidity, particularly in obese patients. … Nitrous oxide, sevoflurane, and desflurane all contribute to rapid recovery, particularly after prolonged procedures.”

If your patient vomits on emergence and the ET tube is still in situ, the cuff on the ET tube will protect their lower airway. And if you choose to extubate your patient awake, the occurrence of laryngospasm will be, in this author’s experience, rare.

It’s true that coughing on an ET tube can disrupt surgical repairs, increase intracranial pressure, increase intraocular pressure, or cause hypertension and tachycardia, but per Miller’s Anesthesia, “Marked increases in arterial blood pressure and heart rate occur frequently at the time of ‘light’ extubation. These effects are alarming but normally transient, and there is little evidence of adverse consequences.”

My advice: Use light levels of general anesthetics on your intubated patients, and learn how to wake your patients from general anesthesia quickly at the conclusion of surgery. Don’t suction the patient until you are ready to remove the ET tube, because the suction catheter stimulates early coughing.

The ET tube is your friend. I’d recommend you don’t pull it out until you’re certain you don’t need it any more.

The definitive reference from the medical literature on this topic is Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the management of tracheal extubation, written by Popat M.

 

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?

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

ADVICE FOR PASSING THE ORAL BOARD EXAMS IN ANESTHESIOLOGY

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)

As a faculty member on the Stanford Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, I enjoy the opportunity to give mock oral exams to the Stanford residents. First-year residents struggle mightily, while third-year residents are experienced and savvy. Taking six mock oral exams during a three-year anesthesia residency is valuable preparation for the real American Board of Anesthesiology exam. Based on decades of experience, here is my advice for passing the oral board exams in anesthesiology.

I’m not an American Board of Anesthesiology (ABA) Examiner, but I’ve been lucky enough to know a dozen or more ABA Examiners over many years. Twice a year at Stanford we provide mock-oral exams to the anesthesia residents to prepare them for when they officially take the real exam at the conclusion of their training.

You’ve heard that 20% of examinees fail the oral exam, and you’re worried. What should you do? The mock exams follow the exact format of the real  oral exam, and I’ve co-examined with experienced ABA examiners on multiple occasions. Here’s what I’ve learned from them, and what Stanford’s ABA examiners teach their residents about passing the Oral Board Exam in Anesthesiology.

Preparation:

  1. Read Miller’s Anesthesia cover to cover. Read it during your entire residency, and consider re-reading it in its entirety prior to taking the Exam.
  2. Be well-trained. Work hard during residency. Do challenging cases and read about those cases before and after the anesthetic. Attend the department lectures, and mortality and morbidity conferences.
  3. Download and memorize the algorithms in the Stanford Emergency Manual/Cognitive Aid for Perioperative Critical Events.
  4. Find board-certified anesthesiologists who are willing to give you mock-oral practice exams. It helps.

Taking the actual oral board exam test:

  1. Format: You will be tested in two 35-minute sessions, Part A and Part B. For each session, you will have two examiners, a Senior Examiner and a Junior Examiner. For each session, you will be given a stem question of a specific anesthetic case 10 minutes prior to the session. An example question might be something like: “A 50-year-old man, 120 kg, 6 feet tall, is scheduled for a cholecystectomy. He has ankylosing spondylitis, and uses an insulin pump to manage his diabetes. He has dyspnea on climbing one flight of stairs.”
  2. The format for Part A: The Senior Examiner will question you for 10 minutes on intraoperative management, then the Junior Examiner will question you for 15 minutes on postoperative management and critical care, and then the Senior Examiner will question you for 10 minutes on 3 or more additional topics.
  3. The format for Part B: The Senior Examiner will question you for 10 minutes on preoperative management, then the Junior Examiner will question you for 15 minutes on intraoperative management, and then the Senior Examiner will question you for 10 minutes on 3 or more additional cases. Your examiners for Part B will not be the same individuals who examined you in Part A.
  4. The stem questions and additional questions will be scripted to cover all aspects of anesthesiology, i.e. obstetrics, pediatric, neurosurgical, cardiac, pain, regional blocks, trauma, etc.
  5. You’ll get the stem question 10 minutes prior to entering the exam room. Use these 10 minutes of time to organize your thoughts. Take notes and formulate your anesthetic plan. Try to discern the biggest medical risks/pitfalls of this particular case, and make a plan to anticipate these risks.
  6. Examiners score each candidate in four qualities:  A. Application of Knowledge (Did you demonstrate that you not only knew facts, but that you applied them in a clinical scenario?), B. Judgment (Did you make sound decisions?), C. Adaptability (Were you able to change your plan in response to a changes in the situation or the patient’s condition?), and D. Organization and Presentation (How well did you communicate? Are you an anesthesia consultant?)
  7. Remember Airway-Breathing-Circulation, in that order. Don’t harm a patient by losing the airway. Know the ASA Difficult Airway Algorithm by heart.
  8. If the question relates to one of the 25 algorithms in the Stanford Emergency Manual/Cognitive Aid for Perioperative Critical Events, then explain exactly how you’d follow the steps in the Manual.
  9. Imagine yourself in the OR actually doing the case, and explain exactly what you would normally do and why. Don’t follow a plan you would never take in actual practice.
  10. Try not to ask questions. Use your time to answer questions.
  11. There is no one right answer for most clinical scenario questions. Just be prepared to justify why you chose the plan you chose.
  12. Expect bad things (complications) to happen to your patients. Don’t be alarmed, the complications are written into the script. Tell the examiner what you would do.
  13. If you don’t know an answer, it’s better to say “I don’t know” than to blunder and guess.
  14. Make eye contact with the examiners throughout. Speak confidently and talk to them like a colleague.
  15. “Ringing the bell.” During your oral answers, your job is to “ring the bell” as  often as possible with pertinent facts of pharmacology, physiology, and medical knowledge pertinent to the case. Demonstrate what you know. Demonstrate that you can apply your knowledge, adapt to changes in clinical situations, use reasonable clinical judgment based on the information available, and present your ideas in a clear and organized manner.
  16. EXAMPLE STEM QUESTION:

“A 50-year-old man, 120 kg, 6 feet tall, is scheduled for a cholecystectomy. He has ankylosing spondylitis, and uses an insulin pump to manage his diabetes. He has dyspnea on climbing one flight of stairs.”

For this stem question, a Part B oral exam may proceed as follows:

I. First 10 minutes (preoperative management)

Expect questions such as:

  1. How would you work up the shortness of breath? Would you cancel the surgery? Why? Would you order pulmonary function tests? What do you know about pulmonary function tests? What is an FEV1?
  2. What is ankylosing spondylitis? What are the anesthetic risks?
  3. What would you do with the insulin therapy preoperatively? What types of insulin are there? How does insulin work in glycemic control? Would you stop the insulin pump? Continue it? Why? How tightly will you control the glucose level preoperatively?
  4. Define morbid obesity. Is this patient morbidly obese? How does obesity affect pulmonary physiology? Discuss the anesthetic risks associated with morbid obesity.
  5. Do you need a cardiology consult preoperatively? Why? Why not?
  6. The surgeon tells you the surgery is urgent, and he can’t wait for a cardiology consult or a treadmill test before surgery. What do you tell the surgeon?

II. The next 15 minutes (Intraoperative management)

Expect questions such as:

  1. What monitors will you use for the surgery? Why? You are unable to insert an art line. What will you do?
  2. How would you induce anesthesia? (If you chose to induce general anesthesia without an awake intubation, and you paralyze this patient, expect the examiner to give you an impossible intubation in this patient with ankylosing spondylitis. If mask ventilation is impossible, you will have a difficult rescue problem). Bottom line: this patient needs an awake intubation via a fiberoptic technique. Discuss how you’d do this.
  3. What maintenance anesthetic would you use? Why would you choose sevoflurane over isoflurane? What is MAC? How does the MAC vary with patient age?
  4. How often would you check blood glucose levels? The glucose concentration is 495 mg/dL, what would you do? The glucose concentration drops to 33 mg/dL, what would you do?
  5. The oxygen saturation drops to 85% intraoperatively. What would you do, both diagnostically and therapeutically?
  6. The intraoperative blood pressure drops to 65/35. What would you do? What diagnostic interventions, if any? What therapies? How does ephedrine work? How does phenylephrine work?
  7. The heart rate increases to 150 beats per minute. What would you do? What diagnostic interventions, if any? What therapies? The heart rate drops to 30 beats per minute. What would you do? What diagnostic measures, if any? What therapies?

III.  The final 10 minutes (examples of 3 additional cases):

  1. A preeclamptic woman presents for an urgent Cesarean section. She has a blood pressure of 160/100 and platelet count of 30,000. How would you do the anesthetic? Would you do a spinal? An epidural? Why or why not? If you do a general anesthetic, how will you manage her blood pressure?
  2. A 2-year-old boy presents for surgery. He has an open eye injury and a full stomach. How will you induce anesthesia? Will you start an awake IV? Will you do a mask induction? What are the risks of each?
  3. An 89-year-old woman with end-stage-renal-disease presents at 1 a.m. for emergency bowel obstruction surgery. Her last hemodialysis was four days ago. How will you manage her renal disease? Will you delay surgery to dialyze her? The surgeon tells you that delaying surgery will result in her dying of sepsis. How will you proceed?

Additional advice:

In addition to reading Miller’s Anesthesia twice, read through the Clinical Cases for Anesthesia Professionals in theanesthesiaconsultant.com, and follow the guidelines I’ve outlined in these cases.

Good luck!

 

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 by clicking on the picture below:

DSC04882_edited

USEFUL PEDIATRIC ANESTHESIA EQUATIONS

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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

You are driving to the hospital, en route to doing a pediatric anesthetic on a 2-year-old that will require an endotracheal tube. You are thinking through the case in advance. What can you do to plan your anesthetic? There are some useful pediatric anesthesia equations you can use to prepare yourself.

 

intubated anesthetized child

 

During my anesthesia training at Stanford, Dr. Stanley Samuels, the co-author of Anesthesiologist’s Manual of Surgical Procedures, by Jaffe and Samuels, (Fourth Edition, 2009, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins), taught me a series of equations regarding pediatric anesthetics. These equations are listed below, and provide time-tested guidelines to help the anesthesiologist select the correct endotracheal tube size, the correct intravenous infusion rate, and to estimate a child’s weight and dosing requirements of intravenous drugs.

As Dr. Samuels told me, “You can be driving in toward the hospital, knowing that your patient is 2 years old, and plan details of  your anesthetic in advance.” The equations are as follows:

  • The endotracheal tube size = age/4 + 4
  • Estimating a child’s weight:

Newborn = 3 kg

1-year-old = 10 kg

Add 2 kg per year up until the age of 6 years.

  • The IV rate per hour = 40 ml/hr (first 10 kg) + 20 ml/hr (second 10 kg) plus 10 ml/hr for every extra 10 kg
  • Dosing of IV medications:

A 7-year-old takes ½ of adult dose

A 1-year-old takes ¼ of adult dose

A newborn takes 1/10 of adult dose

For your 2-year-old patient, you will prepare a 4.5 ID endotracheal tube, expect the patient to weigh about 12 kilograms, plan a maintenance IV rate of 45 ml/hour, and expect that all drug doses (including emergency resuscitation drug doses) will be in a range of slightly more than ¼ of typical adult doses.

 

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?

 

 

 

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

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)

Dr. Novak intubating a patient using a McGrath 5 videolaryngoscope in the operating room. Full story available at Outpatient Surgery Magazine.

Cover story, Magazine article on techniques of starting IV's

 

Vascular Access Made Easy

Time-tested tips for locating veins and starting IVs.

Categories:

—ALL SMILES The best IV starts are the ones patients don’t remember.

Talented surgeons, a staff full of Florence Nightingales and Starbucks in the waiting room won’t matter much to patients if they’re stuck more than pincushions during IV starts. It’s true: Patients who’ve been poked and prodded multiple times in pre-op will remember that experience long after they leave your facility, no matter how successful their surgeries. Make sure patients never complain about IVs again with these 6 proven steps for first-stick-success, which I’ve developed from starting more than 20,000 lines throughout my career.

 

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?

 

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

COVER STORY, OUTPATIENT SURGERY ARTICLE ON TECHNIQUES FOR STARTING DIFFICULT IV’S

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SEVEN DEADLY DRUGS IN AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST’S DRAWER

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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

As anesthesiologists we are the only physicians who routinely prescribe and administer injectable medications ourselves. Most physicians write orders for medications. Registered nurses then administer the medications on hospital wards, in intensive care units, in emergency rooms, and in clinics. As anesthesiologists we have our own drug cart, stocked with dozens of medications, including hypnotics, paralyzing drugs, cardiovascular drugs, antibiotics, anti-nausea drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and resuscitation drugs. There are Seven Deadly Drugs in an anesthesiologist’s drawer.

drug ampoules in an anesthesia drawer

Typically, we make a decision to inject a drug, then open the ampoule, draw the contents of the ampoule into a syringe, and inject it into the patient … without the approval, input, or monitoring of any other healthcare provider.

Do medication errors occur? Yes they do, because anesthesiologists are human, and to err is human. In a survey conducted in Japan between 1999 and 2002 in more than 4,291,925 cases, the incidence of critical incidents due to drug administration error was 18.27/100,000 anesthetics. Cardiac arrest occurred in 2.21 patients per 100,000 anesthetics. Causes of death were overdose or selection error involving non-anesthetic drugs, 47.4%; overdose of anesthetics, 26.3%; inadvertent high spinal anesthesia, 15.8%; and local anesthetic intoxication, 5.3%. Ampoule or syringe swap did not lead to any fatalities. (Irita K, et al. Critical incidents due to drug administration error in the operating room: an analysis of 4,291,925 anesthetics over a 4 year period. Masui 2004; 53(5):577–84. )

In a South African study of 30,412 anaesthetics, anaesthetists reported a combined incidence of one error or near-miss per 274 cases. Of all errors, 36.9% were due to drug ampoule misidentification; of these, the majority (64.4%) were due to similar looking ampoules. Another 21.3% were due to syringe identification errors. No major complication attributable to a drug administration error was reported. (Llewellyn RL, et al. Drug administration errors: a prospective survey from three South African teaching hospitals. Anaesth Intensive Care 2009 ; 37(1):93–8. )

What can be done to eliminate or minimize medication errors? A Japanese study examined the value of color-coding syringes, as follows: blue syringes contained local anesthetics; yellow syringes, sympathomimetic drugs; and white-syringes with a red label fixed opposite the scale, muscle relaxants. Although five syringe swaps were recorded from February 2003 to January 2004 in 5901 procedures prior to the change, they encountered no syringe swaps from February 2004 to January 2005 in 6078 procedures performed after switching to color-coded syringes (P <0.05). (Hirabayashi Y, et al. The effect of colored syringes and a colored sheet on the incidence of syringe swaps during anesthetic management. Masui 2005; 54(9):1060–2.)

Published evidence-based practices to reduce the risk of medication error include the following recommendations:

  1. The label on any drug ampoule or syringe should be read carefully before a drug is drawn up or injected;
  2. The legibility and contents of labels on ampoules and syringes should be optimized according to agreed standards; syringes should always be labeled; formal organization of drug drawers and workspaces should be used;
  3. Labels should be checked with a second person or a device before a drug is drawn up or administered. (Note: this is impractical in the anesthesia world.)
  4. Dosage errors are particularly common in pediatric patients. Technological innovations, including the use of bar codes and various cognitive aids, may facilitate compliance with these recommendations. (Merry AF, Anderson BJ. Medication errors–new approaches to prevention. Paediatr Anaesth 2011; 21(7):743–53.)

Bar-code medication administration (BCMA) systems exist for anesthesiologists to identify the ampoule of each drug at the time of administration. I’m not seeing these devices in widespread use in the United States yet. A pilot study in Great Britain perceived that bar-code readers contributed to the prevention of drug errors. The study concluded that the  technological aspects of its integration into the operating theatre environment, and learning, will require further attention. (Evley R. Confirming the drugs administered during anaesthesia: a feasibility study in the pilot National Health Service sites, UK. Br J Anaesth 2010; 105(3):289–96.)

In addition to the data from the aforementioned publications on the incidences of medication errors, how many medication errors go unpublished and unreported? Many anesthesiologists I know have shared their tales of medication errors, all of which are unpublished and unreported in the medical literature. Some swaps and errors will be inconsequential. Some swaps and errors will prolong an anesthetic, such as when a muscle relaxant paralyzes a patient at an unintended time or dose. Some swaps and errors contain the potential for dire complications.

The ancient Christian world identified Seven Deadly Sins. They were wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. There exist at least seven medications that an anesthesiologist must strive to never inject intravenously in error. I call these the Seven Deadly Drugs.  All are present in the anesthesiologists’ drug drawer or at the operating room pharmacy. They are as follows:

  1. Epinephrine (1mg/1ml ampoule). Epinephrine is an important drug during ACLS to treat asystole and refractory ventricular fibrillation, to treat anaphylaxis, or to be used as an infusion to treat decreased cardiac output. This ampoule is routinely stocked in most drug drawers. If one injects it in error into a healthy patient, major hypertension and tachycardia will ensue.  Think blood pressures in the 250/150 range, and heart rates approaching 200 beats per minute. This can be lethal in elderly patients, or in patients with diminished cardiac reserve.
  2. Phenylephrine (10 mg/1 ml ampoule). Phenylephrine, when injected in 100-microgram doses or used as a dilute infusion, is an important drug to treat hypotension. This ampoule is routinely stocked in most drug drawers. If one injects it in error into a healthy patient, major hypertension will ensue, as well as reflex bradycardia.  Think blood pressures in the 250/150 range, and heart rates dropping below 50 beats per minute. This can be lethal in elderly patients, or patients with diminished cardiac reserve.
  3. Nitroprusside (50 mg/2ml) Nitroprusside, when diluted into an infusion, is an important drug to treat hypertension. If this ampoule is injected undiluted, the patient will experience rapid arterial vasodilation and severe hypotension.
  4. Insulin (100 Units/1ml, 10 ml vial). Insulin is an important medication to treat hyperglycemia. Typical doses range from 5–30 Units, which is a mere 1/20th to 3/10th of one milliliter. An erroneous injection of an insulin overdose to an anesthetized patient can result in severe hypoglycemia and brain death.
  5. Potassium Chloride (20 Meq/10 ml). Potassium chloride is an important treatment for hypokalemic patients. If it is administered erroneously as a bolus, potassium chloride can cause severe ventricular arrhythmias and death.
  6. Heparin (1000 U/ml). Heparin is an important anticoagulant, used routinely in open heart surgery and vascular surgery. If it is administered in error, it can cause unexpected bleeding during surgery.
  7. Isoproterenol (1 mg/5 ml) Isoproterenol can be used as a dilute infusion to increase heart rate in critically ill patients.  One of the hospitals I work at includes an ampoule of isoproterenol in the routine drug drawer, next to ampoules of common medications such as ketorolac (Toradol), hydrocortisone, and promethazine (Phenergan). If one injects a bolus of isoproterenol in error into a healthy patient, major tachycardia and hypertension will ensue. This can be lethal in elderly patients, or patients with diminished cardiac reserve.

What can anesthesiologists do to eliminate the risks of erroneously bolus injecting the Seven Deadly Drugs? This author recommends elimination of major vasopressor drugs such as epinephrine, phenylephrine, and isoproterenol and major vasodilators such as nitroprusside from routine drug drawers. This author recommends elimination of the potent anticoagulant heparin from routine drug drawers. Insulin is routinely sequestered in an operating room refrigerator, and most hospitals have protocols that insulin doses be double-checked by two medical professionals prior to injection. Potassium chloride is routinely sequestered the operating room pharmacy as well, distanced from the anesthesiologist’s routine drug drawer.

Above all, anesthesia practitioners need to be vigilant of the risk of picking up the wrong drug ampoule in error. Read the labels of your ampoules carefully, and take care not to inject any of the Deadly Seven Drugs.

 

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

KEEPING ANESTHESIA SIMPLE: THE KISS PRINCIPLE

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 4 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Clinical Cases:  You’re scheduled to anesthetize a 70-year-old man for a carotid endarterectomy, a 50-year-old man for an arthroscopic rotator cuff repair, and a 30-year-old woman for an Achilles tendon repair.  What anesthetics would you plan? “Keep It Simple, Stupid…” The KISS principle applies in anesthesiology, too.

 

Discussion:  In 1960, U.S. Navy aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson coined the KISS Principle, an acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” The KISS principle supports that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complex. Simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. The KISS Principle likely found its origins in similar concepts such as Occam’s razor, Leonardo da Vinci‘s “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” and architect Mies Van Der Rohe‘s “Less is more.”

Let’s look at the three cases listed above.  For the carotid surgery, you choose an anesthetic regimen based on dual infusions of propofol and remifentanil, aiming for a rapid wake-up at the conclusion of surgery.  For the arthroscopic rotator cuff repair, you fire up the ultrasound machine and insert an interscalene catheter preoperatively.  After you’ve inserted the catheter, you induce general anesthesia with propofol and maintain general anesthesia with sevoflurane.  For the Achilles repair, you perform a popliteal block preoperatively.  After you’ve performed the block, you induce general anesthesia with propofol, insert an endotracheal tube, turn the patient prone, and maintain general anesthesia with sevoflurane and nitrous oxide.

All three cases proceed without complication.

Ten miles away, an anesthesiologist in private practice is scheduled to do the same three cases.  For each of the three cases she chooses the same anesthetic regimen:  Induction with propofol, insertion of an airway tube (an endotracheal tube for the carotid patient, and a laryngeal mask airway for the shoulder patient and the ACL patient, and an endotracheal tube for the prone Achilles repair), followed by sevoflurane and nitrous oxide for maintenance anesthesia and a narcotic such as fentanyl titrated in as needed for postoperative analgesia.  The carotid patient is monitored with an arterial line, and vasoactive drugs are used as necessary to control hemodynamics.

“Wait a minute!” you say. “Elegant anesthesia requires advanced techniques for different surgeries. Why would a private practitioner do all three cases with nearly identical choices of drug regimen?  Why would a private practitioner fail to tailor their anesthetic plan to the surgical specialty? Total intravenous anesthesia and ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia are important arrows in the quiver of a 21st-century anesthesiologist, aren’t they?”

In my first week in private practice, just months after graduating from the Stanford anesthesia residency program, the anesthesia chairman at my new hospital emphasized relying on the KISS Principle in anesthesia practice.  He stressed that the objective of clinical anesthesia wasn’t to make cases interesting and challenging, but to have predictable and complication-free outcomes. Exposing a patient to extra equipment (two syringe pumps), or two anesthetics (regional plus general) instead of general anesthesia alone, adds layers of complexity, and defies the KISS principle.

There are no data indicating that using two syringe pumps and total intravenous anesthesia will produce a better outcome than turning on a sevoflurane vaporizer.  There are no data demonstrating that combining a regional anesthetic with a general anesthetic for shoulder arthroscopy or Achilles tendon surgery will improve long-term outcome.

The KISS principle opines that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complex, and doing two anesthetics instead of one adds complexity.  I’ve learned that an anesthesiologist should choose the simplest technique that works for all three parties:  the surgeon, the patient, and the anesthesiologist. The hierarchy from most simple to complex might look something like this:  (1) local anesthesia alone, (2) local plus conscious sedation, (3) a regional block plus conscious sedation, (4) general anesthesia by mask, (5) general anesthesia with a laryngeal mask airway, (6) general anesthesia with an endotracheal tube, or (7) general anesthesia plus regional anesthesia combined.  The combination of drugs used should be as minimal and simple as possible.

If all three parties (the surgeon, the patient, and the anesthesiologist) are okay with the patient being awake for a particular surgery, then the simplest of the first three options can be selected.  If any one or all of the three parties wants the patient unconscious, then the simplest option of (4) – (7) can be selected.

I’m not an opponent of regional anesthesia.  Ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia is a significant advance in our specialty for appropriate cases, and substituting regional anesthesia for a general anesthetic is a reasonable alternative. Compared with general anesthesia, peripheral nerve blocks for rotator cuff surgery have been associated with shorter discharge times, reduced need for narcotics, enhanced patient satisfaction, and fewer side effects (Hadzic A, Williams BA, Karaca PE, et al.: For outpatient rotator cuff surgery, nerve block anesthesia provides superior same-day recovery after general anesthesia.  Anesthesiology  2005; 102:1001-1007). On the other hand, meta-analysis has demonstrated no long-term difference in outcome between regional and general anesthesia for ambulatory surgery.  (Liu SS, Strodtbeck WM, Richman JM, Wu CL: A comparison of regional versus general anesthesia for ambulatory anesthesia: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.  Anesth Analg  2005; 101:1634-1642). Why perform combined regional anesthesia plus general anesthesia for minor surgeries?  Are we doing regional blocks just to showcase our new ultrasound skills? If there is an ultrasound machine in the hallway and an ambulatory orthopedic patient on the schedule, these two facts alone are not an indication for a regional block. Patients receive an extra bill for the placement of an ultrasound-guided block, and economics alone should never be a motivation to place a nerve block.

In a painful major orthopedic surgery such as a total knee replacement or a total hip replacement, a regional block can improve patient comfort and outcome. This month’s issue of Anesthesiology a retrospective review of nearly 400,000 patients who had total knee or total hip replacement.  Compared with general anesthesia, neuroaxial anesthesia is associated with an 80% lower 30-day mortality and a 30 – 80% lower risk of major complications (Memtsoudis et al., Perioperative Comparative Effectiveness of Anesthetic Technique in Orthopedic Patients, Anesthesiology. 118(5):1046-1058, May 2013).

Many outpatient orthopedic surgeries performed under straight general anesthesia require only modest oral analgesics afterward.  I had general anesthesia for a shoulder arthroscopy and subacromial decompression last month, and required no narcotic analgesics post-op.  If I’d had an interscalene block, the anesthesiologist could have attributed my comfort level to the placement of the block.  No block was necessary.

Achilles repairs don’t require a combined regional–general anesthetic. Achilles repairs simply don’t hurt very much. One surgeon in our practice does his Achilles repairs under local anesthesia with the patient awake, and the cases go very smoothly.  Other surgeons in our practice insist that a popliteal block be placed prior to general anesthesia for Achilles repairs, a dubious decision because (a) it defies the KISS Principle, and (b) the surgeon has no expertise in dictating anesthetic practice.

Every peripheral nerve block carries a small risk. Although serious complications are unusual, risks include falling; bleeding; local tissue injury, pneumothorax; nerve injury resulting in persistent pain, numbness, weakness or paralysis of the affected limb; or local anesthetic toxicity.  Systemic local anesthetic toxicity occurs in 7.5–20 per 10,000 peripheral nerve blocks (Corman SL et al., Use of Lipid Emulsion to Reverse Local Anesthetic-Induced Toxicity, Ann Pharmacother 2007; 41(11):1873-1877).

Use the simplest anesthetic that works.  Assess whether combined regional–general anesthetics are necessary or wise.  I realize that complex anesthetic regimens are routine aspects of a solid training program, because residents need to leave their training program with a mastery of multiple skills.  But once you’re in private practice, my advice is to take heed of the KISS Principle.

 

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?

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

SHOULD YOU CANCEL SURGERY FOR A BLOOD PRESSURE OF 170/99?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 44 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Clinical Case for Discussion:  This month’s question is on hypertension and anesthesia. You are scheduled to anesthetize a 71-year-old male for an arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.  His blood pressure when you meet him in pre-op is 170/99 mmHg.  The nurses and the surgeon are alarmed.  What would you do? Should you cancel surgery for a blood pressure of 170/99?

Discussion:  You assess the patient carefully.  A review of his chart shows he’s been taking anti-hypertensive oral medications for ten years.  His current regimen includes daily atenolol and lisinopril, with his most recent doses taken this morning with a sip of water.  He was seen in his internist’s office one week ago, and at that time his blood pressure was 140/88.  He has no other medical comorbidities. His cardiac, renal, and neurologic histories are negative. He does not have diabetes. His BMI (Body Mass Index) is normal at 25. He walks three miles per day.  His resting EKG and his BUN and creatinine are normal.

The patient’s physical exam is unremarkable except that he appears nervous.  Should you cancel the case and send him back to his internist to adjust the blood pressure medical therapy regimen?  Should you lower his blood pressure acutely with intravenous antihypertensive drugs, and then proceed with the surgery?

Hypertension, defined as two or more blood pressure readings greater than 140/90 mm Hg, is a common affliction found in 25% of adults and 70% of adults over the age of 70 (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, Chapter 34, Preoperative Evaluation). Over time, hypertension can cause end-organ damage to the heart, arterial system, and kidneys. Hypertensive and ischemic heart disease are the most common types of organ damage associated with hypertension.  Anesthesiologists are always wary of cardiac complications in hypertensive patients.

Chronic hypertension is a serious health hazard.  But what about a single, markedly-elevated blood pressure value prior to elective surgery? Are there any data to guide our decision about whether to proceed with surgery?  There are.  A 2004 publication by Howell is a meta-analysis of 30 studies examining the relationship between hypertensive disease, elevated admission arterial pressure, and perioperative cardiac outcome.  This paper found little evidence for perioperative complications in patients with admission arterial pressures of less than 180 mm Hg systolic or 110 mm Hg diastolic.  This paper recommends that anesthesia and surgery not be cancelled for blood pressures lower than 180/110 mm Hg.

Based on the Howell study, Miller’s Anesthesia recommends that elective surgery be delayed for hypertension, until the blood pressure is less than 180/110 mm Hg.

In my prior career as an internal medicine doctor, I saw many hypertensive patients who’d presented for surgery with elevated blood pressures, yet whose blood pressure was adequately controlled in clinic.  The anxiety and stress of anticipated surgery can elevate blood pressure acutely.  If surgery is cancelled because of this hypertension and the patient is referred back to the primary care internist, the blood pressure is often well-controlled in the office setting on the same drug regimen that gave poor blood pressure control on admission to surgery.  A primary care provider will be reluctant to add further medications in the office setting if the blood pressure is not elevated in clinic.

What about emergency surgery?  What if a patient presents for urgent surgery for acute cholecystitis, and his blood pressure is 190/118 mm Hg?  For urgent or emergent surgery, consider titrating intravenous antihypertensive drugs such as labetolol (5–10 mg q 5–10 minutes prn) or hydralazine (5–10 mg q 5–10 minutes prn) to decrease blood pressure prior to initiating anesthesia.  Because the eventual induction of general anesthesia with intravenous and volatile anesthetics will lower blood pressure by vasodilation and cardiac depression, any pre-induction antihypertensives must be titrated with great care.  Once doses of labetolol or hydralazine are injected, there is no way to remove the effect of that drug.  For critically ill patients, consider monitoring with an arterial line and infusing a more titratable and short-acting drug such as nitroprusside for blood pressure control.

Let’s return to the anesthetic for your elective shoulder surgery patient with the blood pressure of 170/99 mmHg. You begin by administering 2 mg of midazolam IV.  Three minutes later his blood pressure decreases to 160/90.  You anesthetize him with 50 micrograms of fentanyl, 140 mg of propofol IV, and 30 mg of rocuronium, and intubate the trachea.  In the next 20 minutes, while the patient is moved into a lateral position for the surgery, his blood pressure drops to 95/58. Because most anesthetics depress blood pressure by vasodilation or cardiac depression, it’s common for patients such as this one to require intermittent vasopressors to avoid hypotension, especially at moments when surgical stimulus is minimal. One of the recommendations of the Howell study is that intraoperative arterial pressure be maintained within 20% of the preoperative arterial pressure.  This recommendation can be a challenge, especially if the preoperative blood pressure was elevated.  A 20% reduction from 170/99 (mean pressure = 122 mm Hg) would be 136/79.  A 20% reduction from the mean pressure of 122 mm Hg would be a mean pressure of 98 mm Hg.  You choose to treat the patient’s hypotension with 10 mg of IV ephedrine, which raises the blood pressure to 140/85.  Fifteen minutes later, the surgeon makes his incision, and the blood pressure escalates to 180/100.  You treat this by deepening anesthesia with small, incremental doses of fentanyl and propofol.  The surgery concludes, you awaken the patient without complications, and his blood pressure in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit is 150/88 mm Hg.

This pattern of perioperative blood pressure lability is common in hypertensive patients, and will require your vigilance to avoid extremes of hypotension or hypertension. Remember that based on the Howell study, Miller’s Anesthesia recommends elective surgery be delayed for hypertension until the blood pressure is less than 180/110 mm Hg.  Armed with this information, you’ll cancel fewer patients for preoperative hypertension.

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

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 ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

WILL YOU HAVE AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST FOR YOUR WISDOM TEETH EXTRACTION SURGERY?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 20 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

In the United States, will you have an anesthesiologist for your wisdom teeth extraction surgery? If you are a healthy patient, the answer is: probably not.

In the United States, oral surgeons perform most wisdom teeth extraction surgeries.  This is a very common surgery, with the operation performed on up to five million times in the United States each year. Most patients are healthy teenagers.  Oral surgeons perform wisdom teeth surgeries in their office operating rooms, and most oral surgeons manage the intravenous sedation anesthesia themselves, without the aid of an anesthesiologist.

Oral surgeons are trained in the airway management and general anesthesia skills necessary to accomplish this safely, and a nurse assists the oral surgeon in delivering sedative medications.  Oral surgeons must earn a license to perform general anesthesia in their office. To administer general anesthesia in an office, most oral surgeons complete at least three months of hospital-based anesthesia training. In most states, oral surgeons then undergo an in-office evaluation by a state dental-board-appointed examiner, who observes an actual surgical procedure during which general anesthesia is administered to a patient. It’s the examiner’s job to inspect all monitoring devices and emergency equipment, and to test the doctor and the surgical staff on anesthesia-related emergencies. If the examinee successfully completes the evaluation process, the state dental board issues the doctor a license to perform general anesthesia.  Note that even though the oral surgeon has a license to direct anesthesia, the sedating drugs he or she orders are often administered by a nurse who has no license or training in anesthesia.

In an oral surgeon’s office, general anesthesia for wisdom teeth extraction typically includes intravenous sedation with several drugs:  a benzodiazepine such as midazolam, a narcotic such as fentanyl or Demerol, and a hypnotic drug such as propofol, ketamine, and/or methohexital.  Prior to administering these powerful drugs, the oral surgeon must be certain that he or she can manage the Airway and Breathing of the patient. After the patient is asleep, the oral surgeon injects a local anesthetic such as lidocaine to block the superior and inferior alveolar nerves.  These local anesthetic injections render the mouth numb, so the surgeon can operate without inflicting pain.  Typically, no breathing tube is used and no potent anesthetic vapor such as sevoflurane is used.  The oral surgeon may supplement intravenous sedation with inhaled nitrous oxide.

The oral surgeon has all emergency airway equipment, breathing tubes, and emergency drugs available. The safety record for oral surgeons using these methods seems excellent.  My review of the National Institutes of Health website PubMed reveals very few instances of death related to wisdom teeth extraction.  Recent reports include one patient who died in Germany due to a heart attack after his surgery (Kunkel M, J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 2007 Sep;65(9):1700-6.  Severe third molar complications including death-lessons from 100 cases requiring hospitalization).  A second patient died in Japan because of a major bleed in his throat occluding trachea, one day after his surgery (Kawashima W, Forensic Sci Int. 2013 May 10;228(1-3):e47-9. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2013.02.019. Epub 2013 Mar 26. Asphyxial death related to postextraction hematoma in an elderly man).

Most oral surgeons do not publish their mishaps or complications, so the medical literature is not the place to search for data on oral surgery deaths. Deaths that occur during or after wisdom teeth extraction are sometimes reported in the lay press.  In April 2013, a 24-year-old healthy man began coughing during his wisdom teeth extraction in Southern California, and went into cardiac arrest.  He was transferred to a hospital, where he died several days later.

In 2011, a Baltimore-area teen died during wisdom teeth extraction. The family’s malpractice claim was settled out of court in 2013.

Every general anesthetic carries a small risk, such as these two reported cases of death following wisdom teeth extractions.  All acute medical care involves attending to the A – B – C ‘s of Airway, Breathing, and Circulation.  During surgery for wisdom teeth extraction, the oral surgeon is operating in the patient’s mouth. Surgery in the mouth increases the chances that the operation will interfere with the patient’s Airway or Breathing.  The surgeon’s fingers, surgical instruments, retractors, and gauze pads crowd into the airway, and may influence breathing.  If the patient’s breathing becomes obstructed, altering the position of the jaw, the tongue, or the neck is more challenging than when surgery does not involve the airway.

I’ve attended to hundreds of patients for dental surgeries.  For dental surgery in a hospital setting, anesthesiologists commonly insert a breathing tube into the trachea after the induction of general anesthesia.  A properly positioned tracheal tube can assure the Airway and Breathing for the duration of the surgery.  Because an anesthesiologist is not involved with performing the surgery, his or her attention can be 100% focused on the patient’s vital signs and medical condition.  When anesthesiologists are called on to perform general anesthesia for wisdom teeth extraction in a surgeon’s office, we typically use a different anesthetic technique.  Usually there is no anesthesia machine to deliver potent inhaled anesthetics, therefore intravenous sedation is the technique of choice.  Usually no airway tube is inserted.  When general anesthesia is induced in an office setting, the patient must have an adequate airway, i.e. and American Society of Anesthesiologists Class I or II airway. A typical technique is a combination of intravenous midazolam, fentanyl, propofol, and/or ketamine.  Oxygen is administered via the patient’s nostrils throughout the surgery. The adequacy of breathing is continuously monitored by both pulse oximetry and end-tidal carbon dioxide monitoring.  The current American Society of Anesthesiologist Standards for Basic Anesthetic Monitoring (July 1, 2011) state that “Every patient receiving general anesthesia shall have the adequacy of ventilation continually evaluated. … Continual monitoring for the presence of expired carbon dioxide shall be performed unless invalidated by the nature of the patient, procedure or equipment.”

The motto of the American Society of Anesthesiologists is “Vigilance.”  If the patient’s oxygen saturation and/or end-tidal carbon dioxide numbers begin to decline, an anesthesiologist will act immediately to improve the A – B – C ‘s of Airway, Breathing, and Circulation.

Let’s return to our opening question: Will you have an anesthesiologist for your wisdom teeth extraction surgery?  If you are a healthy patient, I cannot show you any data that an anesthesiologist provides safer care for wisdom teeth surgery than if an oral surgeon performs the anesthesia. The majority of wisdom teeth extractions in the United States are performed on healthy patients without an anesthesiologist, and reported complications are rare.  If you want an anesthesiologist, you need to make this clear to your oral surgeon, and ask him to make the necessary arrangements.  If you do choose to enlist a board-certified anesthesiologist for your wisdom teeth extractions, know that your anesthesia professional has completed a three or four year training program in his field, and is expert in all types of anesthesia emergencies.  As a downside, you will be responsible for an extra bill for the professional fee of this anesthesiologist.

Whether an anesthesiologist or an oral surgeon attends to your anesthesia, the objectives are the same:  Each will monitor the A – B – C ‘s of your Airway, Breathing, and Circulation to keep you oxygenated and ventilated, so you can wake up and leave that dental office an hour or so after your wisdom teeth extraction surgery has concluded.

 

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

CAN YOU CHOOSE YOUR ANESTHESIOLOGIST?

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)

You choose the car you drive, the apartment you rent, the smart phone in your pocket, and the flavor of ice cream among 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins.  Most of you  choose your family physician, your dermatologist, and your surgeon.  But can you choose your anesthesiologist?

 

It depends.

To answer the question, let’s look at how anesthesia providers are assigned for each day of surgery.

Who makes the decision as to which anesthesia provider is assigned to your case? The anesthesia service at every hospital or healthcare system will have a scheduler.  This scheduler is an individual (usually an anesthesiologist) who surveys the list of the surgical cases one day ahead of time.  There will be multiple operating rooms and multiple cases in each operating room. Each operating room is usually scheduled for six to ten hours of surgical cases.  The workload could vary from one ten-hour case to eight shorter cases.  The total number of operating rooms will vary from hospital to hospital.  Typically each room is specialty-specific, that is, all the cases in each room are the same type of surgery.  The scheduler will an assign appropriate anesthesia provider to each room, depending on the skills of the anesthesia provider and the type of surgery in that room.

There are multiple surgical specialties and multiple types of anesthetics.  An important priority is to schedule an anesthesia provider who is skilled and comfortable with the type of surgery scheduled.  An open-heart surgery will require a cardiac anesthesiologist.  A neonate (newborn) will require a pediatric anesthesiologist.  Most surgeries, e.g., orthopedic, gynecologic, plastic surgery, ear-nose-and-throat, abdominal, urologic, obstetric, and pediatric cases over age one, are bread-and-butter anesthetics that can be handled by any well-trained provider.

Each day certain anesthesiologists are “on-call.”  When an anesthesiologist is on-call, he or she is the person called for emergency add-on surgeries that day and night.  The on-call anesthesiologist is expected to work the longest day of cases, and the scheduler will usually assign that M.D. to an operating room with a long list of cases.  If you have emergency surgery at 2 a.m., you will likely be cared for by the on-call anesthesiologist.  A busy anesthesia service may have a first-call, a second-call, and a third-call anesthesiologist, a rank order that defines which anesthesia provider will do emergency cases if two or three come in simultaneously.  A busy anesthesia service will have on-call physicians in multiple specialties, i.e., there will be separate on-call anesthesiologists for cardiac cases, trauma cases, transplant cases, and obstetric cases.

Different hospitals have different models of anesthesia services.  In parts of the United States, especially the Midwest, the South, and the Southeast, the anesthesia care team is a common model.  An anesthesia care team consists of both certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNA’s) and M.D. anesthesiologists.  For complex cases such as cardiac cases or brain surgeries, an M.D. anesthesiologist may be assigned as the solitary anesthesia provider.  For simple cases such as knee arthroscopies or breast biopsies, the primary anesthesia provider in each operating room will be a CRNA, with one M.D. anesthesiologist serving as the back-up consultant for up to four rooms managed by CRNA’s.

In certain states, the state governor has opted out of the requirement that an M.D. anesthesiologist must supervise all CRNA-provided anesthesia care.  In these states, a CRNA may legally provide anesthesia care without a physician supervising them.  Currently, the seventeen states that have opted out of physician supervision of CRNA’s include Alaska, California,  Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin.  In some hospitals in these states, your anesthesia provider may be an unsupervised nurse anesthetist, not a doctor at all.

Some hospitals have only M.D. anesthesiologists who personally do all the cases.

Academic hospitals, or university hospitals, have residents-in-training who administer most of the anesthetic care.  In academic hospitals, faculty members supervise anesthesia residents in a ratio of one faculty to one resident or one faculty to two residents.

Can a surgeon request a specific anesthesia provider?  Yes.  At times, a surgeon may have certain anesthesia providers that he or she requests and uses on a regular basis.  It’s far easier for a surgeon to request a specific anesthesia provider than it is for you to do so.

The assignment of your anesthesia provider is usually made by the scheduler on the afternoon prior to surgery, and you the patient will have little or no say in the matter. If you are like most patients, you have no idea who is an excellent anesthesia provider and who is less skilled. You won’t find much written about anesthesiologists on Yelp, Healthgrades, or other consumer social-media websites.  Most patients don’t even remember the name of their anesthesia provider unless something went drastically wrong.  Such is the nature of our specialty.  Your anesthesia provider will spend a mere ten minutes with you while you’re awake, and during those ten minutes your mind will be reeling with worries about surgical outcomes and risks of anesthesia.  The anesthesia provider’s name is not a high priority.  After the surgery is over, anesthesiologists are a distant memory.

What if your next-door neighbor is an anesthesiologist whom you respect?  What if you are scheduled for surgery at his hospital or surgery center, and you want him to take care of you?  Can this be arranged?  Most likely, it can.  The best plan for requesting a specific anesthesiologist is to have the anesthesiologist work the system from the inside, several days prior to your surgery date.  He will talk to the scheduler and make sure that he is assigned into the operating room list that includes your surgery.  You’ll be happy and reassured to see him on the day of surgery, and he’ll likely be happy to take care of you.  Anesthesiologists love to be requested by patients.  It makes us feel special.  Doctors aspire to be outstanding clinicians, and a request from a specific patient validates that we are unique.

As you can see, the decision of who is assigned to be the anesthesia provider for your surgery is a multifaceted process. Your best strategy for requesting a specific anesthesiologist is to (1) contact the anesthesiologist yourself and ask that he or she contact anesthesia scheduling and make sure that he or she is scheduled to do your case, or (2) contact your surgeon and ask your surgeon if they can arrange to have the specific anesthesia provider that you request.

 

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?

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

DOES REPEATED GENERAL ANESTHESIA HARM THE BRAINS OF INFANTS AND YOUNG CHILDREN?

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 3 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Recent scholarly publications have raised the question whether repeated exposure to general anesthesia is harmful to the developing brain in infants and young children.  Millions of children have surgery under general anesthesia each year. Is repeated exposure to general anesthesia safe for the developing brain of your child? Let’s look at the evidence.

pediatric anesthesia

In 2011, a retrospective Mayo Clinic study looked at the incidence of learning disabilities (LDs) in a cohort of children born in Olmsted County, Minnesota, from 1976 to 1982.  Among the 8,548 children analyzed, 350 of the children received general anesthesia before the age of 2.  A single exposure to general anesthesia was not associated with an increase in LDs, but children who had two or more anesthetics were at increased risk for LDs.  The study concluded that repeated exposure to anesthesia and surgery before the age of 2 was a significant independent risk factor for the later development of LDs.  The authors could not exclude the possibility that multiple exposures to anesthesia and surgery at an early age adversely affected human neurodevelopment with lasting consequences.

The same group of Mayo Clinic researchers looked at the incidence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children born from 1976 to 1982 in Rochester, Minnesota.  Among the 5,357 children analyzed, 341 ADHD cases were identified.  For children with no exposure anesthesia before the age of 2 years, the cumulative incidence of ADHD at age 19 years was 7.3%  Exposure to multiple procedures requiring general anesthesia was associated with an increased cumulative incidence of ADHD of 17.9%. The authors concluded that children repeatedly exposed to procedures requiring general anesthesia before age 2 years were at increased risk for the later development of ADHD.

Anesthesia scientists decided to study this problem in mice.  In March 2013, researchers at Harvard and other hospitals exposed 6- and 60-day-old mice to various anesthetic regimens. The authors then determined the effects of the anesthesia on learning and memory function, and on the levels of proinflammatory chemicals such as cytokine interleukin-6 in the animals’ brains. The authors showed that anesthesia with 3% sevoflurane for 2 hours daily for 3 days induced cognitive impairment (i.e., unusually poor mental function) and neuroinflammation (i.e., elevated levels of brain inflammatory chemicals such as interleukin-6) in young but not in adult mice. Anesthesia with 3% sevoflurane for 2 hours daily for 1 day or 9% desflurane for 2 hours daily for 3 days caused neither cognitive impairment nor neuroinflammation. Treatment with the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug ketorolac caused improvement in the sevoflurane-induced cognitive impairment. The authors concluded that anesthesia-induced cognitive impairment may depend on age, the specific anesthetic agent, and the number of exposures. The findings also suggested that cellular inflammation in the brain may be the basis for the problem of anesthesia-induced cognitive impairment, and that potential prevention and treatment strategies with NSAIDs may ultimately lead to safer anesthesia care and better postoperative outcomes for children.

The same Harvard research group assessed the effects of sevoflurane on brain function in pregnant mice, and on learning and memory in fetal and offspring mice. Pregnant mice were treated with 2.5% sevoflurane for 2 hours and 4.1% sevoflurane for 6 hours. Brain tissues of both fetal and offspring mice were harvested and immunohistochemistry tests were done to assess interleukin-6 and other brain inflammatory levels.  Learning and memory functions in the offspring mice was determined by using a water maze. The results showed that sevoflurane anesthesia in pregnant mice induced brain inflammation, evidenced by increased interleukin-6 levels in fetal and offspring mice.  Sevoflurane anesthesia also impaired learning and memory in offspring mice. The authors concluded that sevoflurane may induce detrimental effects in fetal and offspring mice, and that these findings should promote more studies to determine the neurotoxicity of anesthesia in the developing brain.

What does all this mean to you if your children need anesthesia and surgery?  Although further studies and further data will be forthcoming, the current information suggests that:  (1) if your child has one exposure to anesthesia, this may constitute no increased risk to their developing brain, and (2) repeated surgery and anesthetic exposure to sevoflurane may be harmful to the development of the brain of children under 2 years of age.  It would seem a wise choice to delay surgery until your child is older if at all possible.

What does all this mean to anesthesiologists?  We’ll be watching the literature for new publications on this topic, but in the meantime it seems prudent to avoid exposing newborns and young children to repeated anesthetics with sevoflurane.  Currently, sevoflurane is the anesthetic of choice when we put children to sleep with a mask induction, because sevoflurane smells pleasant and it works fast.  Children become unconscious within a minute or two.  After a child is asleep, it may be advisable to switch from sevoflurane to the alternative gas anesthetic desflurane, since the Harvard study on mice showed anesthesia with 9% desflurane for 2 hours daily for 3 days caused neither cognitive impairment nor neuroinflammation.  A second alternative is to switch from sevoflurane to intravenous anesthetics alone, e.g., to utilize propofol and remifentanil infusions instead of sevoflurane.

The concept of pediatric anesthesia harming the developing brain was reviewed in the lay press in Time magazine in 2009.  The four articles I summarized above represent the most recent and detailed advances on this topic.  Stay tuned.  The issue of anesthetic risk to the developing brain will be closely scrutinized for years to come.

 

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?

 

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

THE OBESE PATIENT AND ANESTHESIA

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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

 

Obese patients make anesthesiologists’ work more arduous.  Obese patients, especially morbidly obese and super obese patients, are at increased risk when they need surgery. Perhaps you’re overweight and you wish you weren’t. Your anesthesiologist wishes the same thing.  Let’s look at the reasons why.

Two hundred million Americans, or 65% of the U.S. adult population, are overweight or obese. Obesity as a disease is second only to smoking as a preventable cause of death.

The body mass index (BMI) has become the most widely applied classification tool used to assess individual weight status.  BMI is defined as the patient’s weight, measured in kilograms, divided by the square of the patient’s height, measured in meters.

A normal BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9.  Patients are considered to be overweight with a BMI between 25 and 29.9 obese with a BMI between 30 and 39.9, morbidly obese between 40 and 49.9, and super obese at greater than 50.

Morbid obesity is associated with far more serious health consequences than moderate obesity, and creates additional challenges for health care providers.  Between 2000 and 2010, the prevalence of morbid obesity in the U.S. increased by 70%, whereas the prevalence of super obesity increased even faster.  It’s estimated that in 2010, 15.5 million adult Americans, or 6.6% of the population, had an actual BMI >40, and carried the diagnosis of morbid obesity.

MEDICAL PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH OBESITY

Obesity is an independent risk factor for heart disease, hypertension, stroke, hyperlipidemia, osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus, cancer, and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).  A neck circumference > 17 inches in men or > 16 inches cm in women is associated with obstructive sleep apnea. As a result of these concomitant conditions, obesity is also associated with early death.

There is a clustering of metabolic and physical abnormalities referred to as the “metabolic syndrome.” To be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, you must have at least three of the following: abdominal obesity, elevated fasting blood sugar, hypertension, low HDL levels, or hypertriglyceridemia.  In the United States, nearly 50 million people have metabolic syndrome, for an age-adjusted prevalence of almost 24%. Of people with metabolic syndrome, more than 83% meet the criterion of obesity. Patients with metabolic syndrome have a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and are at increased risk for all-cause mortality.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a condition characterized by recurrent episodes of upper airway obstruction occurring during sleep. Obesity is the greatest risk factor for OSA, and about 70% of patients (up to 80% of males and 50% of females) with OSA are obese.  OSA is defined as complete blockage of airflow during breathing lasting 10 seconds or longer, despite maintenance of neuromuscular ventilatory effort, and occurring five or more times per hour of sleep (Apnea Hypopnea Index, or AHI, greater than or equal to five), and accompanied by a decrease of at least 4% in arterial oxygen saturation.  This diagnosis can be made only in patients who undergo a sleep study. Obstructive sleep apnea is classified as mild, moderate, or severe, as follows:

  • Mild OSA =A HI of 5 to 15 events per hour
  • Moderate OSA = AHI of 15 to 30 events per hour
  • Severe OSA = AHI of more than 30 events per hour

Treatment is recommended for patients with moderate or severe disease, and initial treatment is the wearing of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device during sleep.

ANESTHETIC CHALLENGES

Every anesthesia task can be more difficult to perform in an obese patient.  Excess adipose tissue (fat) on the upper extremities makes it harder to place an IV catheter.  Excess fat surrounding the mouth, throat, and neck can make it more difficult to place an airway tube.  Excess fat can make it more difficult to place a needle in the proper position for a spinal anesthetic, an epidural anesthetic, or a regional block of a specific peripheral nerve.  On thick, cone-shaped upper arms, it can be difficult for a blood pressure cuff to detect the blood pressure accurately.

During surgery, an anesthesiologist’s job is to maintain the patient’s A-B-C’s of Airway, Breathing, and Circulation, in that order.  All three tasks are more difficult in obese patients.

Airway procedures are often much more difficult to perform in obese patients than in patients with normal BMIs.  Every general anesthetic begins with the anesthesiologist injecting intravenous medications that induce sleep.  Next the anesthesiologist controls the breathing by using a mask over the patient’s face, and then he or she places an airway tube through the patient’s mouth into the windpipe.

The airway anatomy of obese patients, with or without OSA, may show a short, thick neck, large tongue, and significantly increased amounts of soft tissue surrounding the uvula, tonsils, tongue, and lateral aspects of their throats.  This can contribute to the development of airway obstruction and also increase the probability that it will be more difficult to keep the airway open during mask ventilation.  This can also contribute to difficulty placing an anesthesia airway tube into the windpipe at the beginning of general anesthesia.

What about breathing difficulties?  The chief reason that obese patients have difficulty with breathing during anesthesia is that they have abnormally low lung volumes for their size.  When lying flat on their back, a patient’s increased abdominal bulk pushes up on their lungs, and prevents the lungs from inflating fully.  Once the patient is anesthetized, this mechanical situation is worsened, because breathing is impaired by the anesthetic drugs and muscle relaxation allows the abdomen to sink further into the chest.  The essence of the problem is that the abdomen squashes the lungs and makes them less efficient both as a reservoir and as an exchange organ for oxygen.  Because of this, the obese patient is at risk for running out of oxygen and turning blue more quickly than a lean patient.

In one study,  patients undergoing general anesthesia received 100% oxygen by facemask before induction of general anesthesia. After the induction of general anesthesia, the patients were left without ventilation until their oxygen saturation fell from 100% to 90%.  Patients with normal BMIs took 6 minutes for their oxygen level to fall to 90%. Obese patients reached that end point in less than 3 minutes.

What about circulation?  Maintaining stable circulatory status can be difficult because obese patients have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease, including hypertension, arrhythmias, stroke, heart failure, and coronary artery disease. During anesthesia and surgery, unexpected high or low blood pressure events are more common in obese patients than in those with normal BMIs.  Morbidly obese patients have a higher rate of heart attack postoperatively than patients with normal BMIs.

Regional anesthesia, especially epidural and spinal anesthesia, is often a safer technique than general anesthesia in obese patients. However, regional anesthesia can be  technically more difficult because of the physical challenge of the anatomy being obscured by excess fat.

Operative times are often longer in obese patients, owing to technical challenges for the surgeon regarding anatomy distorted or hidden behind excessive fat.  Longer surgery means a longer time under general anesthesia, which is a cause of delayed awakening from anesthesia. At the conclusion of surgery, obese patients wake more slowly than lean patients. Anesthetic drug and gas concentrations drop more slowly post-surgery, because traces of the chemicals linger in the reservoirs of excessive adipose tissue.

Common serious postoperative complications in obese patients include blood clots in the legs (deep venous thrombosis) and wound infections at the surgical incision line.

(Reference for this section:  Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 64).

DATA ON THE RISKS OF OBESITY AND SURGERY

In one landmark study, researchers analyzed postoperative complications in 6,773 patients treated between 2001 and 2005 at the University of Michigan. Of the patients who had complications, 33% were obese and 15% were morbidly obese. Obese patients had much higher rates of postoperative complications than nonobese patients, as follows:  5 times more heart attacks, 4 times more peripheral nerve injuries, 1.7 times more  wound infections, and 1.5 times more urinary tract infections. The overall death rate was no different for obese and nonobese patients, but the death rate was nearly twice as high among morbidly obese patients as compared with nonobese patients (2.2% vs. 1.2%).

CONCLUSIONS

Experienced anesthesiologists respect the risks and difficulties presented by obese, morbidly obese, and super obese patients.  The ranks of overweight Americans are growing, and every week we anesthetize thousands of them for surgery.  As an obese American, are you safe in the operating room?  You probably are, because anesthesia professionals are well-educated in the risks of taking care of you. But you must realize that you are at higher risk for a complication than those with a normal BMI.

What can you do about all this? If you are morbidly obese and your surgery is optional, you may consider not having surgery at all.  If you have time before surgery, you can try to lose weight.  Before any surgery, you should consult your primary care physician to make sure that any obesity-related medical problems have been addressed.  You may be placed on medication for hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or diabetes.  You may have undiagnosed OSA, and may benefit from a nightly CPAP treatment for that disorder.

Bariatric surgery (e.g., gastric banding, gastric bypass) is a well-accepted and effective treatment for weight loss in super obese and morbidly obese patients.  Bariatric surgery refers to surgical alteration of the small intestine or stomach with the aim of producing weight loss. More than 175,000 bariatric surgeries were performed in 2006, and more than 200,000 were performed in 2008 (Miller’s Anesthesia, 7th Edition, 2009, Chapter 64). Weight loss after bariatric surgery is often dramatic. On the average, patients lose 60% of their extra weight. For example, a 350-pound person who is 200 pounds overweight could lose about 120 pounds.  All the anesthetic considerations and risks discussed above would still apply to any patient coming to the operating room for weight loss surgery.

Obesity was considered a rarity until the middle of the 20th century.  Now more than 300,000 deaths per year in the United States and more than $100 billion in annual health care spending are attributable to obesity. Obesity most frequently develops when food calorie intake exceeds energy expenditure over a long period of time.

If you’re obese, this doctor recommends you eat less, and exercise more.  Stay lean if you can.  Your anesthesiologist will thank you.

 

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 ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

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THE TOP TEN MOST USEFUL ADVANCES AND THE FIVE MOST OVERRATED ADVANCES AFFECTING ANESTHESIA IN THE PAST 25 YEARS

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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In 1986 the American Society of Anesthesiologists adopted pulse oximetry and end-tidal CO2 monitoring as standards of care.  These two monitors were our specialty’s major advances in the 1980’s, and made anesthesia safer for everyone. What are the most significant advances affecting anesthesia since that time? As a clinician in private practice, I’ve personally administered over 20,000 anesthetics in the past quarter century.  Based on my experience and observations, I’ve assembled my list of the Top Ten Most Useful Advances Affecting Anesthesia from 1987-2012.  I’ve also assembled my list of the Five Most Overrated Advances Affecting Anesthesia from 1987-2012.

THE TOP TEN MOST USEFUL ADVANCES AFFFECTING ANESTHESIA IN THE PAST 25 YEARS (1987- 2012):

#10. The cell phone (replacing the beeper).  Cell phones changed the world, and they changed anesthesia practice as well.  Before the cell phone, you’d get paged while driving home and have to search to find a payphone.  Cell phones allow you to be in constant contact with all the nurses and doctors involved in your patient’s care at all times.  No one should carry a beeper anymore.

#9. Ultrasound use in the operating room.  The ultrasound machine aids peripheral nerve blockade and catheter placement, and intravascular catheterization.  Nerve block procedures used to resemble “voodoo medicine,” as physicians stuck sharp needles into tissues in search of paresthesias and nerve stimulation.  Now we can see what we’re doing.

#8.  The video laryngoscope.  Surgeons have been using video cameras for decades.  We finally caught up.  Although there’s no need for a video laryngoscope on routine cases, the device is an invaluable tool for seeing around corners during difficult intubations.

#7.  Rocuronium.  Anesthesiologists long coveted a replacement for the side-effect-ridden depolarizing muscle relaxant succinylcholine.  Rocuronium is not as rapid in onset as succinylcholine, but it is the fastest non-depolarizer in our pharmaceutical drawer.  If you survey charts of private practice anesthesiologists, you’ll see rocuronium used 10:1 over any other relaxant.

#6.  Zofran.  The introduction of ondansetron and the 5-HT3 receptor blocking drugs gave anesthesiologists our first effective therapy to combat post-operative nausea and vomiting.

#5. The ASA Difficult Airway Algorithm.  Anesthesia and critical care medicine revolve around the mantra of “Airway-Breathing-Circulation.”  When the ASA published the Difficult Airway Algorithm in Anesthesiology in 1991, they validated a systematic approach to airway management and to the rescue of failed airway situations.  It’s an algorithm that we’ve all committed to memory, and anesthesia practice is safer as a result.

#4.  The internet.  The internet changed the world, and the Internet changed anesthesia practice as well.  With Internet access, clinicians are connected to all known published medical knowledge at all times.  Doctors have terrific memories, but no one remembers everything.  Now you can research any medical topic in seconds. Some academics opine that the use of electronic devices in the operating room is dangerous, akin to texting while driving.  Monitoring an anesthetized patient is significantly different to driving a car.  Much of O.R. monitoring is auditory.  We listen to the oximeter beep constantly, which confirms that our patient is well oxygenated.  A cacophony of alarms sound whenever vital signs vary from norms.  An anesthesia professional should never let any electronic device distract him or her from vigilant monitoring of the patient.

#3.  Sevoflurane.  Sevo is the volatile anesthetic of choice in community private practice, and is a remarkable improvement over its predecessors.  Sevoflurane is as insoluble as nitrous oxide, and its effect dissipates significantly faster than isoflurane.  Sevo has a pleasant smell, and it replaced halothane for mask inductions.

#2.  Propofol.  Propofol is wonderful hypnotic for induction and maintenance.   It produces a much faster wake-up than thiopental, and causes no nausea.  Propofol makes us all look good when recovery rooms are full of wide-awake, happy patients.

#1.  The Laryngeal Mask Airway.  What an advance the LMA was.  We used to insert endotracheal tubes for almost every general anesthesia case.  Endotracheal tubes necessitated laryngoscopy, muscle relaxation, and reversal of muscle relaxation.  LMA’s are now used for most extremity surgeries, many head and neck surgeries, and most ambulatory anesthetics.

THE FIVE MOST OVERRATED ADVANCES AFFECTING ANESTHESIA IN THE PAST 25 YEARS (1987-2012):

#5.   Office-based general anesthesia.  With the advent of propofol, every surgeon with a spare closet in their office became interested in doing surgery in that closet, and they want you to give general anesthesia there.  You can refuse, but if there is money to be earned, chances are some anesthesia colleague will step forward with their service.  Keeping office general anesthesia safe and at the standard of care takes careful planning regarding equipment, monitors, and emergency resuscitation protocols.  Another disadvantage is the lateral spread of staffing required when an anesthesia group is forced to cover solitary cases in multiple surgical offices at 7:30 a.m.  A high percentage of these remote sites will have no surgery after 11 a.m.

#4.  Remifentanil.  Remi was touted as the ultra-short-acting narcotic that paralleled the ultra-short hypnotic propofol.  The problem is that anesthesiologists want hypnotics to wear off fast, but are less interested in narcotics that wear off and don’t provide post-operative analgesia.  I see remi as a solid option for neuroanesthesia, but its usefulness in routine anesthetic cases is minimal.

#3.  Desflurane.  Desflurane suffers from not being as versatile a drug as sevoflurane.  It’s useless for mask inductions, causes airway irritation in spontaneously breathing patients, and causes tachycardia in high doses.  Stick with sevo.

#2.  The BIS Monitor.  Data never confirmed the value of this device to anesthesiologists, and it never gained popularity as a standard for avoiding awareness during surgery.

#1.  The electronic medical record.  Every facet of American society uses computers to manage information, so it was inevitable that medicine would follow. Federal law is mandating the adoption of EMRs.  But while you are clicking and clicking through hundreds of Epic EMR screens at Stanford just to finish one case, anesthesiologists in surgery centers just miles away are still documenting their medical records in minimal time by filling out 2 or 3 sheets of paper per case. Today’s EMRs are primitive renditions of what will follow. I’ve heard the price tag for the current EMR at our medical center approached $500 million.  How long will it take to recoup that magnitude of investment?  I know the EMR has never assisted me in caring for a patient’s Airway, Breathing, or Circulation in an acute care setting.  Managing difficulties with the EMR can easily distract from clinical care.  Is there any data that demonstrates an EMR’s value to anesthesiologists or perioperative physicians?

Your Top Ten List and Overrated Five List will differ from mine.  Feel free to communicate your opinions to me at rjnov@yahoo.com.

As we read this, hundreds of companies and individuals are working on new products.  Future Top Ten lists will boast a fresh generation of inventions to aid us in taking better care of our patients.

 

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

AWARENESS UNDER GENERAL 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)

How common is awareness under general anesthesia? In 2007, Hollywood released the movie Awake, in which the protagonist, played by Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars) is awake during the general anesthetic for his heart surgery, and overhears the surgeon’s plan to murder him.  Producer Joana Vicente told Variety that Awake “will do to surgery what Jaws did to swimming in the ocean.” The movie trailer airs a statement that states, “Every year 21 million people are put under anesthesia. One out of 700 remain awake.”

 

            Awake was not much of a commercial success, with a total box office of only $32 million, but the film did publicize the issue of intraoperative awareness under general anesthesia, a topic worth reviewing.

If you undergo general anesthesia, do you have a 1 in 700 chance of being awake?  If you are a healthy patient undergoing routine surgery, the answer is no.  If you are sick and you are having a high-risk procedure, the answer is yes.

A key publication on this topic was the Sebel study. The Sebel study was a prospective, nonrandomized study, conducted on 20,000 patients at seven academic medical centers in the United States. Patients were scheduled for surgery under general anesthesia, and then interviewed in the postoperative recovery room and at least one week after anesthesia.

A total of 25 awareness cases were identified, a 0.13% incidence, which approximates the 1 in 700 incidence quoted in the Awake movie trailer. Awareness was associated with increased American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status, i.e. sicker patients.  Assuming that approximately 20 million anesthetics are administered in the United States annually, the authors postulated that approximately 26,000 cases of intraoperative awareness occur each year.

Healthy patients are at minimal risk for intraoperative awareness. Patients at higher risk for intraoperative awareness include:

1. Patients with a history of substance abuse or chronic pain.

2. American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Class 4 patients (patients with a severe systemic disease that is a constant threat to their life) and others with limited cardiovascular reserve.

3. Patients with previous history of intraoperative awareness.

4. The use of neuromuscular paralyzing drugs during the anesthetic.

5. Certain surgical procedures are higher risk for intraoperative awareness.  These procedures include cardiac surgery, Cesarean sections under general anesthesia, trauma or emergency cases.

The causes of intraoperative awareness include:

1. Intentionally light anesthesia administered to patients who are hypotensive or hypovolemic, or those with limited cardiovascuar reserve.

2. Intentionally light anesthesia administered to obstetric patients, in the attempt to avoid neonatal respiratory depression.

3. Efforts to expedite operating room turnover and minimize recovery room times.

4. Some patients have higher anesthetic requirements, due to chronic alcohol or drugs.

5. Equipment and provider errors:

Empty vaporizers with no potent anesthetic liquid inside

Syringe pump malfunction

Syringe swap, or mislabeling of a syringe

6. Difficult intubation, in which the anesthesia provider forgets to give supplementary IV doses of hypnotics.

7. Choice of anesthetic.  In multiple trials, the use of neuromuscular blockers is associated with awareness.

8. Some studies show a higher incidence of awareness with total intravenous anesthesia or nitrous-narcotic techniques.

What are the legal implications of intraoperative awareness?

The Domino study reported that cases of awareness represented 1.9% of malpractice claims against anesthesiologists. Deficiencies in labeling syringes and vigilance were common causes for awake paralysis. The patients’ vital signs were not classic clues:  hypertension was present in only 15% of recall cases, and tachycardia was present in only 7%.

What are the consequences of intraoperative awareness?

The following consequences have been reported from the Samuelsson study:

1. Recollections of auditory perceptions and a sensation of paralysis.  Anxiety, helplessness, and panic.  Pain is described less frequently.

2. Up to 70% of patients develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), i.e. late psychological symptoms of anxiety, panic attacks, chronic fear, nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, depression, or preoccupation with death.

What about BIS Monitoring?

Bispectral Index monitoring, or BIS monitoring, uses a computerized algorithm to convert a single channel of frontal EEG into an index score of hypnotic level, ranging from 100 (awake) to 0 (isoelectric EEG).

The BIS monitor was FDA-approved in 1996.  A BIS level of 40 – 60 reflects a low probability of consciousness during general anesthesia.  BIS measures the hypnotic components of anesthesia (e.g. effects of propofol and volatile agents), and is relatively insensitive to analgesic components (e.g. narcotics) of the anesthetic.  The BIS monitor is neither 100% sensitive nor 100% specific.

The B-Aware Trial was a randomized, double-blind, multi-center controlled trial using BIS in 2500 patients at high risk for awareness (cardiac surgery, C-sections, impaired cardiovascular status, trauma, chronic narcotic users, heavy alcohol users).   Explicit recall occurred in 0.16% (2 patients) when BIS used, vs. 0.89% (11 patients) when no BIS was used. This was a significant finding (p=0.022).

A significant paper published in the world’s leading anesthesia journal concluded that the predictive positive and negative values of BIS monitoring were low due to the infrequent occurrence of intraoperative awareness.  In addition, the cost of BIS monitoring all patients undergoing general anesthesia is high. Because there have been reported cases of awareness despite BIS monitoring, the authors concluded that the effectiveness of the monitor is less than 100%. The authors concluded that the contention that BIS Index monitoring reduces the risk of awareness is unproven, and the cost of using it for this indication is currently unknown.

In 2005, the American Society of Anesthesiologists published its Practice Advisory for Intraoperative Awareness.  The anesthesia practitioner is advised to do the following:

1. Review patient medical records for potential risk factors. (Substance use or abuse, previous history of intraoperative awareness, history of difficult intubation, chronic pain patients using high doses of opioids, ASA physical status IV or V, limited hemodynamic reserve).

2. Determine other potential risk factors. (Cardiac surgery, C-section, trauma surgery, emergency surgery, reduced anesthetic doses in the presence of paralysis, planned use of muscle relaxants during the maintenance phase of general anesthesia, planned use of nitrous oxide-opioid anesthesia).

3. Patients considered to be at increased risk of intraoperative awareness should be informed of the possibility when circumstances permit.

4. Preinduction checklist protocol for anesthesia machines and equipment to assure that the desired anesthetic drugs and doses will be delivered.  Verify IV access, infusion pumps, and their connections.

5. The decision to administer a benzodiazepine prophylactically should be made on a case-by-case basis for selected patients.

6. Intraoperative monitoring of depth of anesthesia, for the purpose of minimizing the occurrence of awareness, should rely on multiple modalities, including clinical techniques (e.g., ECG, blood pressure, HR, end-tidal anesthetic gas analyzer, and capnography)…. Brain function monitoring is not routinely indicated for patients undergoing general anesthesia, either to reduce the frequency of intraoperative awareness or to monitor depth of anesthesia…. The decision to use a brain function monitor should be made on a case-by-case basis by the individual practitioner of selected patients (e.g. light anesthesia).

Published suggestions for the prevention of awareness include:

1. Premedication with an amnestic agent.

2. Giving adequate doses of induction agents.

3. Avoiding muscle paralysis unless totally necessary.

4. Supplementing nitrous/narcotic anesthesia with 0.6% MAC of a volatile agent.

5. Administering 0.8 – 1.0 MAC when volatile agent is used alone.

6. Confirming delivery of anesthetic agents to the patient

In 2006, the California Society of Anesthesiologists released the following Statement on Intraoperative Awareness:

“ . . . Anesthesiologists are trained to minimize the occurrence of awareness under general anesthesia.  It is recognized that on rare occasions, usually associated with a patient’s critical condition, this may be unavoidable.  Furthermore, it is commonplace in contemporary anesthetic practice to employ a variety of techniques using regional nerve blocks and varying degrees of sedation.  Patients often do not make an distinction between these techniques and general anesthesia, yet awareness is often expected and anticipated with the former.  This may have led to a misunderstanding of ‘awareness’ during surgery by many patients.”

In 2011, the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the most prestigious medical journal in the world, published a study looking at using the BIS monitor for the prevention of intraoperative awareness. Prevention of intraoperative awareness in a high-risk surgical population). The researchers tested the hypothesis that a protocol incorporating the electroencephalogram-derived bispectral index (BIS) was superior to a protocol incorporating standard monitoring of end-tidal anesthetic-agent concentration (ETAC) for the prevention of awareness. They randomly assigned 6041 patients at high risk for awareness to either BIS-guided anesthesia or ETAC-guided anesthesia. Results showed that a total of 7 of 2861 patients (0.24%) in the BIS group, as compared with 2 of 2852 (0.07%) in the ETAC group, had definite intraoperative awareness.  The superiority of the BIS protocol was not established.  Contrary to expectations, fewer patients in the ETAC group than in the BIS group experienced awareness.

To conclude, intraoperative awareness is a real but rare occurrence, with certain patient populations at higher risk. The BIS monitor is no panacea. Specific pharmacologic strategies can minimize the incidence of awareness. If you are a healthy patient undergoing a routine procedure, intraoperative awareness should be very rare.

The best defense against intraoperative awareness will always be the presence of a well-trained and vigilant physician anesthesiologist.

 

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

ROBOT ANESTHESIA

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 4 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

Will robots replace anesthesiologists? I am the Medical Director of a surgery center in California that does 5,000 gastroenterology endoscopies per year.  In 2013 a national marketing firm contacted me to seek my opinion regarding an automated device to infuse propofol. The device was envisioned as a tool for gastroenterologist/nursing teams to use to administer propofol safely for endoscopy procedures on ASA class I – II patients.

The marketing firm could not reveal the name of the device, but I believe it was probably the SEDASYS®-Computer-Assisted Personalized Sedation System, developed by the Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., a division of Johnson and Johnson.  The SEDASYS System is a computer-assisted personalized sedation system integrating propofol delivery with patient monitoring. The system incorporates standard ASA monitors, including end-tidal CO2, into an automated propofol infusion device.

The SEDASYS system is marketed as a device to provide conscious sedation.  It will not provide deep sedation or general anesthesia.

Based on pharmacokinetic algorithms, the SEDASYS infuses an initial dose of propofol (typically 30- 50 mg in young patients, or a smaller dose in older patients) over 3 minutes, and then begins a maintenance infusion of propofol at a pre-programmed rate (usually 50 mcg/kg/min).  If the monitors detect signs of over- sedation, e.g. falling oxygen saturation, depressed respiratory rate, or a failure of the end-tidal CO2 curve, the propofol infusion is stopped automatically.  In addition, the machine talks to the patient, and at intervals asks the patient to squeeze a hand-held gripper device.  If the patient is non-responsive and does not squeeze, the propofol infusion is automatically stopped.

As of February, 2013, the SEDASYS system was not FDA approved. On May 3, 2013, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Premarket Approval for the SEDASYS® system, a computer-assisted personalized sedation system.  SEDASYS® is indicated “for the intravenous administration of 1 percent (10 milligrams/milliliters) propofol injectable emulsion for the initiation and maintenance of minimal to moderate sedation, as identified by the American Society of Anesthesiologists Continuum of Depth of Sedation, in adult patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status I or II) undergoing colonoscopy and esophagoduodenoscopy procedures.”  News reports indicate that SEDASYS® is expected to be introduced on a limited basis beginning in 2014.

Steve Shaffer, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford Adjunct Professor, editor-in-chief of Anesthesia & Analgesia, and Professor of Anesthesiology at Columbia University, worked with Ethicon since 2003 on the design, development and testing of the SEDASYS System both as an investigator and as chair of the company’s anesthesia advisory panel.

Dr. Shafer has been quoted as saying, “The SEDASYS provides an opportunity for anesthesiologists to set up ultra-high throughput gastrointestinal endoscopy services, improve patient safety, patient satisfaction, endoscopist satisfaction and reduce the cost per procedure.” (Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News, November 2010, 61:11)

In Ethicon’s pivotal study supporting SEDASYS, 1,000 ASA class I to III adults had routine colonoscopy or esophagogastroduodenoscopy, and were randomized to either sedation with the SEDASYS System (SED) or sedation with each site’s current standard of care (CSC) i.e. benzodiazepine/opioid combination.  The reference for this study is Gastrointest Endosc. 2011 Apr;73(4):765-72. Computer-assisted personalized sedation for upper endoscopy and colonoscopy: a comparative, multicenter randomized study. Pambianco DJ, Vargo JJ, Pruitt RE, Hardi R, Martin JF.

In this study, 496 patients were randomized to SED and 504 were randomized to CSC. The area under the curve of oxygen desaturation was significantly lower for SED (23.6 s·%) than for CSC (88.0 s·%; P = .028), providing evidence that SEDASYS provided less over-sedation than current standard of care with benzodiazepine/opioid.  SEDASYS patients were significantly more satisfied than CSC patients (P = .007). Clinician satisfaction was greater with SED than with CSC (P < .001). SED patients recovered faster than CSC patients (P < .001). The incidence of adverse events was 5.8% in the SED group and 8.7% in the CSC group.

Donald E. Martin, MD, associate dean for administration at Pennsylvania State Hershey College of Medicine and chair of the Section on Clinical Care at the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), expressed concerns about the safety of the device.  Dr. Martin (Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News, November 2010, 61:11) was quoted as saying, “SEDASYS is requested to provide minimal to moderate sedation and yet the device is designed to administer propofol in doses known to produce general anesthesia.”

Dr. Martin added that studies to date have shown that some patients who had  propofol administered by SEDASYS experienced unconsciousness or respiratory depression (Digestion 2010;82:127-129, Maurer WG, Philip BK.). In the largest prospective, randomized trial evaluating the safety of the device compared with the current standard of care, five patients (1%) experienced general anesthesia with SEDASYS. The ASA also voiced concern that SEDASYS could be used in conditions that do not comply with the black box warning in the propofol label, namely that propofol “should be administered only by persons trained in the administration of general anesthesia and not involved in the conduct of the surgical/diagnostic procedure.”

Anesthetists, emergency room doctors, and trauma helicopter nurses are trained in the administration of general anesthesia. Gastroenterologists and endoscopy nurses are almost never experts in airway management.  For this reason, propofol anesthetics for endoscopy are currently the domain of anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists.

In my phone conversation regarding the automated propofol-infusion system, I told the marketing company’s representative that in my opinion a machine that infused propofol without an airway expert present could be unsafe.  The marketing consultant responded that in parts of the Northeastern United States, including New York City, many GI endoscopies are done with the assistance of an anesthesia provider administering propofol.  If SEDASYS were to be approved, the devices could replace anesthesiologists.

In the current fee-for-service model of anesthesia billing, anesthesiologists and CRNA’s bill insurance companies or Medicare for their professional time.  If machines replace anesthesiologists and CRNA’s, the anesthesia team cannot send a fee-for-service bill for professional time.  The marketing consultant foresaw that with the advent of ObamaCare and Accountable Care Organizations, if a health care organization is paid a global fee to take care of a population rather than being paid a fee-for-service sum, then perhaps the cheapest way to administer propofol sedation for GI endoscopy would be to replace anesthesia providers with SEDASYS machines.

A planned strategy is to have gastroenterologists complete an educational course that would educate them on several issues.  Key elements of the course would be: 1) anesthesiologists are required if deep sedation is required, 2) SEDASYS is not appropriate if the patient is ASA 3 or 4 or has severe medical problems, 3) SEDASYS is not appropriate if the patient has risk factors such as morbid obesity, difficult airway, or sleep apnea, and 4) airway skills are to be taught in the simulation portion of the training.  Specific skills are chin life, jaw thrust, oral airway use, nasal airway use, and bag-mask ventilation.  Endotracheal intubation and LMA insertion are not to be part of the class.  If the endoscopist cannot complete the procedure with moderate sedation, the procedure is to be cancelled and rescheduled with an anesthesia provider giving deep IV sedation.

Some anesthesiologists are concerned about being pushed out of their jobs by nurse anesthetists.  It may be that some anesthesiologists will be pushed out of their jobs by machines.

I’ve been told that the marketing plan for SEDASYS is for the manufacturer to give the machine to a busy medical facility, and to only charge for the disposable items needed for each case. The disposable items would cost $50 per case. In our surgery center, where we do 5,000 cases per year, this would be an added cost of $25,000 per year. There would be no significant savings, because we do not use anesthesiologists for most gastroenterology sedation.

There have been other forays into robotic anesthesia, including:

1) The Kepler Intubation System (KIS) intubating robot, designed to utilized video laryngoscopy and a robotic arm to place an endotracheal tube (Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 2012 Oct 25. Robotic anesthesia: not the realm of science fiction any more. Hemmerling TM, Terrasini N. Departments of Anesthesia, McGill University),

2) The McSleepy intravenous sedation machine, designed to administer propofol, narcotic, and muscle relaxant to patients to control hypnosis, analgesia, and muscle relaxation. (Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 2012 Dec;25(6):736-42. Robotic anesthesia: not the realm of science fiction any more. Hemmerling TM, Terrasini N.)

3) The use of the DaVinci surgical robot to perform regional anesthetic blockade. (Anesth Analg. 2010 Sep;111(3):813-6. Epub 2010 Jun 25. Technical communication: robot-assisted regional anesthesia: a simulated demonstration. Tighe PJ, Badiyan SJ, Luria I, Boezaart AP, Parekattil S.).

4) The use of the Magellan robot to place peripheral nerve blocks (Anesthesiology News, 2012, 38:8)

Each of these applications may someday lead to the performance of anesthesia by an anesthesiologist at geographical distance from the patient.  In an era where 17% of the Gross National Product of the United States is already being spent on health care, one can question the logic of building expensive technology to perform routine tasks like I.V. sedation, endotracheal intubation, or regional block placement.  The new inventions are futuristic and interesting, but a DaVinci surgical robot costs $1.8 million, and who knows what any of these anesthesia robots would sell for?  The devices seem more inflationary than helpful at this point.

Will robots replace anesthesiologists?  Inventors are edging in that direction.  I would watch the peer-reviewed anesthesia journals for data that validates the utility and safety of any of these futuristic advances.

It will be a long time before anyone invents a machine or a robot that can perform mask ventilation.  SEDASYS is designed for conscious sedation, not deep sedation or general anesthesia.  Anyone or anything that administers general anesthesia without expertise in mask ventilation and all facets of airway management is courting disaster.

NOTE: In March of 2016, Johnson & Johnson announced that they were going to stop selling the SEDASYS system due to slow sales and company-wide cost cutting. The concept of Robot Anesthesia will have to wait for some future development, if ever, if it is to ever become an important part of the marketplace.

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?

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Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

ANESTHESIOLOGISTS KNOW WHO THE BEST SURGEONS ARE

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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

You’re a patient.  Is your surgeon a wonderful doctor, superb under pressure, or is he or she a self-absorbed nervous individual who can’t operate their way out of a paper bag? You don’t know.  Your anesthesiologist does. Anesthesiologists watch surgeons for a living.

 

Yes, we happen to give anesthetics to patients at the same time, but we anesthesiologists are always watching surgeons work.  If you want to know who the best surgeons are, ask an anesthesiologist, an operating room nurse, or an operating room scrub tech.  We see the surgeons on the front line, and we see their strengths and weaknesses.

Most surgeons spend the majority of their professional time in clinics, meeting patients in preoperative surgical consultations or in postoperative surgical follow up.  Most surgeons operate 1 – 2 days per week.  In contrast, most anesthesiologists have no clinic, and work 90-100% of their time in operating rooms.  In a typical week, an anesthesiologist may do 20-25 anesthetics with 10 – 15 different surgeons.  In a typical year, a busy anesthesiologist may work with 100 – 150 different surgeons.

In an operating room, the anesthesiologist stands 2 to 6 feet away from the surgeon, and has a clear view of the surgeon’s technique and an excellent opportunity to establish rapport with the surgical team.  Anesthesiologists and surgeons know each other very well.

As a patient, you may form your impressions of your surgeon based on encounters in the office or in your hospital room.  Favorable surgeons cast an air of confidence, intelligence, leadership and experience.  You may trust the look in their eye, the tenor of their voice, the firmness of their handshake.  You may like or dislike their necktie, their suit, their haircut or their bedside manner.

You have no idea how competent they are once they don sterile gown and gloves in the operating room, but anesthesiologists know.

The surgeon with the firm handshake may have hands that genuinely shake when they are in surgery.  The slick-appearing surgeon may operate in low gear, their fingers moving as slowly as a twig winding downstream in a muddy river.  In the operating room, the surgeon may be a benevolent professional or a moody tyrant who screams and swears at nurses and techs.  The surgeon with the killer smile may cling to outdated techniques or equipment.  Alternately, the surgeon may be world-class technician who knows his or her anatomy cold, handles tissue with exacting precision, and treats everyone on the surgical team like gold.

What can you, the patient, do about accessing information about your surgeon?

You can Google the surgeon’s name to seek information on their professional background, as well as any Yelp comments on other patient’s experiences with that doctor.  If you know anyone who works at that hospital or surgery center, it’s worth your while to query them and get their insider’s impression about the choice of surgeons that work there.  If you can talk to an anesthesiologist, operating room nurse, or operating scrub tech, they will be your best source of information as to which surgeon to consult.

Good luck.  All surgeons are different.  And remember: tonight when you are watching television, thousands of anesthesiologists are watching thousands of surgeons all over the United States.

 

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?

*
*
*
*

Published in September 2017:  The second edition of THE DOCTOR AND MR. DYLAN, Dr. Novak’s debut novel, a medical-legal mystery which blends the science and practice of anesthesiology with unforgettable characters, a page-turning plot, and the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller, tragedies strike an anesthesiologist as he tries to start a new life with his son.

Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he’ll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move should help Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife, too. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a grouchy nurse anesthetist calling himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven’s Door. As Nico and Johnny settle in, their lives turn around; they even start dating the gorgeous mother/daughter pair of Lena and Echo Johnson. However, when Johnny accidentally impregnates Echo, the lives of the Hibbing transplants start to implode. In true page-turner fashion, first-time novelist Novak gets started by killing soulless Alexandra, which accelerates the downfall of his underdog protagonist now accused of murder. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, and the insults hurled between Nico and his wife are as hilarious as they are hurtful: “Are you my husband, Nico? Or my dependent?” The author’s medical expertise proves central to the plot, and there are a few grisly moments, as when “dark blood percolated” from a patient’s nostrils “like coffee grounds.” Bob Dylan details add quirkiness to what might otherwise be a chilly revenge tale; we’re told, for instance, that Dylan taught “every singer with a less-than-perfect voice…how to sneer and twist off syllables.” Courtroom scenes toward the end crackle with energy, though one scene involving a snowmobile ties up a certain plot thread too neatly. By the end, Nico has rolled with a great many punches.

Nuanced characterization and crafty details help this debut soar.

Click on the image below to reach the Amazon link to The Doctor and Mr. Dylan:

41wlRoWITkL

Learn more about Rick Novak’s fiction writing at ricknovak.com by clicking on the picture below:  

DSC04882_edited

 

 

BLINK: WHEN AN EXPERIENCED ANESTHESIOLOGIST MEETS THEIR PATIENT

THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT 4 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
Latest posts by THE ANESTHESIA CONSULTANT (see all)

I urge you to use Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink to become a better anesthesiologist. Clinical Case for Discussion:  As an anesthesia resident, how does your preoperative interview with a patient differ from that of an anesthesiologist with 20 years of experience?

Discussion:  In my second year of residency, I had the pleasure of working with Stanford anesthesia attending C. Philip Larson, M.D., a Past-Chairman of the Department and a Past Editor-In-Chief of our specialty’s leading publication, Anesthesiology.  My rotation was neuroanesthesia, and each evening prior to surgery Dr. Larson and I would make rounds on the wards to meet the surgical patients for the next day. (In the 1980’s almost all patients were hospitalized one night prior to surgery.)

I was surprised and taken aback by the experience, and I never forgot what those patient encounters were like.  Although Dr. Larson always let me do the anesthesia procedures in the operating room, he presented himself at the pre-op interview as the primary physician in charge of the anesthesia care.  When Dr. Larson entered a patient’s room, he sat down on the bed and played a role that was part Santa Claus and part all-knowing, all-loving deity.

Dr. Larson greeted the patient kindly, introduced both of us, and then launched into a comfortable dialogue about any variety of topics, none of them remotely related to the surgery or the anesthesia.  I kept waiting to hear him say, “can you walk up two flights of stairs?” or “do you ever have chest pain?”

These questions were never asked or answered at the bedside.  They’d already been asked and answered and were present in the patient’s chart.  Dr. Larson valued the preoperative interview as a time to connect with his patient, and to establish rapport and comfort between them.  After perhaps ten minutes of such banter, he would switch gears and state that we would be doing the anesthesia care the next day, that we would keep him or her asleep and safe, and give a modicum of detail about what to expect.  He did not perform any detailed physical exam.

Despite the fact that Dr. Larson was a renowned expert witness in the specialty of anesthesia, he did not recite a litany of informed consent risks.  A particular pet peeve of his was the suggestion that an informed consent discussion should include telling a patient of the risk of death.  His opinion on this issue always was, “If you tell the patient that they can die, and then you do something negligent and they do die, your informed consent protects you not one bit from the fact that you practiced below the standard of care.”

In his best-selling book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes that the risk of a doctor ever being sued has very little to do with how many errors they make.  He explains that there’s an overwhelming number of patients who’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care yet never have filed a malpractice claim.  What was the common denominator of the people who do choose to sue?  According to Gladwell, they feel they were treated badly by their doctor.  That even when injured by clear negligence, most people won’t sue a doctor they like.

Dr. Bruce Halperin, a member of the Associated Anesthesiologists Medical Group in Palo Alto and a member of the Stanford clinical faculty, was renowned for his bedside manner.  In the preoperative area, I often heard Dr. Halperin telling joke after joke, and the intermittent bursts of laughter from his patients sometimes made it difficult for me to even hear the conversation with my own patient.  One of our busiest cosmetic surgeons often had Dr. Halperin telephone patients early in the consultative process to discuss anesthesia issues.  A patient later told this surgeon, “I’m not sure if I want to have the plastic surgery, but I sure do want to have the anesthesia!”

As an anesthesiologist, you have 10-15 minutes to complete your medical interview with your patient, and to get them to respect you, to have confidence in you, and yes . . . to like you.

As a resident-in-training, your preoperative interviews may be thick with questions about active medical problems, particularly cardiac, pulmonary, and neurologic questions.  You may perform a rigorous and detailed exam of the airway, lungs, and heart.  And you likely spend ample time explaining the anesthetic technique, alternatives, and risks.

You are trained to do all these things.  Twenty years from now, your interview may not be as conversational and sparse on medical questions as Dr. Larson’s was, but your technique will evolve.

Most pertinent questions have already been asked and answered in the patient’s medical records.  Tailor your interview as appropriate for the patient’s medical co-morbidities and the invasiveness of the surgery.  For a 68-year-old with diabetes and hypertension who is about to have a cholecystectomy, it will be relevant to ask them whether they can walk up two flights of stairs and whether they ever have chest pain.  For a 24-year-old with a negative history who is about to have a knee arthroscopy, a simple “Are you in excellent health?” may suffice.

What about the physical exam?  For experienced anesthesiologists, the assessment of whether the airway may be difficult can usually accomplished in seconds, with examination of the mouth opening and the neck extension.  You will listen to the lungs and the heart, but in the absence of symptoms, it is rare to uncover any information with your stethoscope that changes your anesthetic.

Patients are nervous before surgery.  They welcome both your expertise in medicine and your skills in making them relax.  Experienced anesthesiologists can explain the anesthetic plan and risks in a fashion that will gain the patient’s trust and confidence.

The only procedure most of us do while the patient is awake and unsedated is the insertion of an I.V. catheter.  This is a time when you have the luxury of talking about any topic that is calming to the patient.  Conversations about the patient’s hobbies, work, hometown, or family are all pleasant diversions to enter the realm of Dr. C. Philip Larson, and connect with the patient without talking any further about anesthesia.

In my previous career, I was an internal medicine doctor.  In medicine clinic there are dozens of questions to be asked and answered:  “Where is the pain?  How long has it been there?  What makes it better?  What makes it worse?  Does it move anywhere? . . .”  With a waiting room full of patients, there was little time to ask each patient where they had dinner last night or where their child was going to college.

In contrast, anesthesia practice can provide a wonderful opportunity to relax your patient with well-spun conversation.  My advice to you is to be as much like C. Philip Larson, M.D. as your practice allows.  Try not to be a walking, talking EPIC-checklist when it’s time to connect with your patients.

 

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