California Society of Anesthesiologists

CSA News

Strange Daze Podcast

Strange Daze is a bi-weekly podcast from the creators of Straight Talk MD, hosted by anesthesiologist Frank Sweeny. Each episode fuses narrative storytelling with science as our host examines a real case of a surgery or a procedure that went terribly wrong and dissects out why.

'A Doctor's Notes On Anesthesia'

Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo specializes in pediatric anesthesiology and treats 1,000 children a year — from micro-preemies to teenagers. His new memoir is called 'Counting Backwards.'

What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have in Common?

"We're not out for recognition," says Dr. William Feaster, an anesthesiologist at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. "What's most important is that you feel you've done a really good job and that the patient has a good outcome. Our recognition is more internal and within the medical community." But the reward is also with the power of their position in the operating room. "We basically run the OR," Dr. Feaster notes, "and it's efficient or not based on how the anesthesiologist is working."

A New Study Says Botox May Help Migraines in Kids

On Monday, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, presented findings from a small study of nine young people from ages 8 to 17 with chronic migraines. Many of them had been hospitalized for migraine pain, and half were homeschooled because of the debilitating effect of their migraines on their daily life. In the study, presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2017 annual meeting, the researchers showed that kids and teens receiving Botox injections every 12 weeks over a five-year period had improvements in their frequency, duration and intensity of migraines. The researchers studied the kids’ medical records, and whether they improved over time.

Intra-op Esmolol Reduces Post-op Pain And Opioid Consumption

Intraoperative infusions of esmolol reduced intraoperative opioid use, PACU opioid use and PACU pain scores, and may be effective as part of a multimodal analgesic regimen in certain patient populations.