“You don’t have to [insert task]! You’re a [doctor, chief, senior]!” Many hospital workers have stopped me from mopping the operating room, taking out the trash, or even helping with relatively minor tasks because of my position. More recently, my own junior colleagues have tried to take on more of…
Dr. S. Rao Mallampati is an anesthesiologist well known for creating one of the most widely accepted pre-operative airway assessments in clinical practice. His original paper correlates the “ability to visualize the faucial pillars, soft palate and base of uvula… as a means of predicting the degree of difficulty in…
I wanted to give you all an idea of what I’ll be doing over the next ~6 months to obtain a Massachusetts medical license and drug enforcement administration (DEA) certification prior to beginning my critical care fellowship. It’s a necessary but cumbersome (and very expensive) process which requires many months…
Merck hosted our first journal club of the academic year yesterday evening at Sullivan’s Steakhouse. The topic: “Clinical Considerations in Neuromuscular Blockade Management” with an emphasis on sugammadex (Bridion). For years, this drug has been used in other parts of the world as a reversal for neuromuscular relaxation due to rocuronium/vecuronium.…
Medicine is all about constantly asking questions. Why is it so? Can it be done better? What am I missing? What’s the diagnosis? What labs/tests should I order? What kind of treatment(s) can I offer?
Friday night was my first senior call in the general/trauma operating rooms at Ben Taub General Hospital. The senior anesthesia resident works with the operating room front desk to coordinate add-on cases posted by various specialities, provides airway assistance at all code 1 traumas brought to the emergency center, responds to…
I have one more day of cardiothoracic anesthesiology at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. Tomorrow’s case will also be my most challenging one to date – a descending thoracic aorta aneurysm repair. I’ll finally get a spinal drain in residency. :-)
This post was inspired by a discussion I had with Dr. Les Yarmush, one of my cardiothoracic anesthesia attendings. I’ve become accustomed to titrating many short acting medications to manage hemodynamics in the ICU and operating room arenas. I like to factor in a patient’s comorbidities and “test” their response…
I completed my first week of cardiothoracic anesthesiology at the Veterans Affairs Hospital, and it has been wonderful! Compared to my last month at the Texas Heart Institute, the VA typically handles only 1-2 cardiothoracic cases daily, allowing me ample time to practice echocardiography and study cardiac physiology. I’ve mainly…
Surgical disciplines meet with patients, decide what operation(s) to perform, discuss the risks/benefits, and manage post-operative admissions with follow-ups. Undoubtedly, it’s a time and labor intensive job, and as a perioperative physician myself, I have an undying respect for my surgical colleagues.