Prevent Post-op Delirium

Preventing Post-op Delirium in May 2010 Outpatient Surgery Magazine

This month’s Outpatient Surgery Magazine features a neat little article on how to prevent post-op delilrium. http://www.outpatientsurgery.net/issues/2010/05/anesthesia-alert

Must have been written by an apologist for the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Never once in the differential diagnosis of post-op delirium was the issue of anesthetic over medication considered and the possibility of radically mitigating (or even eliminating) post-op delirium by measuring the organ our anesthetics measure – the brain!

Also neglected in the author’s analysis was that anesthesia over medication was responsible for nearly one death a day between 1999-2005. (Li G, Anesthesiol Apr. 2009) What part of ‘medicate the brain – measure’ it escaped the author’s analysis?

Patients over 50, beware of anesthesia without a brain monitor! The voice of Goldilocks Anesthesia Foundation (.org) has spoken.

Fatal Dangers of Going Under: What EVERY Patient Should Know

Anesthesiologist Warns of Fatal Dangers of Going Under: What EVERY Patient Should Know Before Surgery

My article was published by The National Health Federation on April 22, 2010.
Read it here:

http://www.thenhf.com/articles/articles_1120/articles_1120.htm

Happy days in warm Hawaii

While most of the country is freezing, my new bride and I made a return to the North Shore of Oahu for honeymoon 1.2 in balmy 80 degree weather.

We were here last month, but as luck would have it, Shelley was sick with that nasty coughing virus that’s been going around. She is feeling better this trip but still recovering.

While we were here in December for honeymoon 1.1, at the invitation of chairman Dr. Don Parsa, I gave a talk to the plastic surgeons at Queens Medical Center. He was so pleased by the content (& delivery) of the talk, ‘What killed Michael Jackson & how to make office anesthesia as safe as possible,’ that he invited me back this month to speak to the Biennial meeting of the Pan Pacific Surgery society on Tuesday, Jan. 12th.

I was also interviewed for Dr. Denise Davis’ radio show in Cincinnati for an hour long show this morning while watching the fabulous surf roll in at Turtle Bay Resort.

Instead of continuing to ‘bang my head against the wall’ of a largely indifferent anesthesia establishment, I am finding greater pleasure going where people are at least open to the idea of patient-centered ‘Goldilocks’ anesthesia – that which is not too much, not too little but always just right because it is driven by the individual patient’s brain response.

I am confident that ‘Goldilocks’ is no fairy tale.

The forces of reactionaryism can only prevail for so long in the face of a cost-effective, simpler, safer anesthetic that yields demonstrably better outcomes.

Measure the brain

Preempt the pain

‘Gag me’ drugs abstain

Aloha!