Pediatric Anesthesia Should Be Banned
Many an interesting tidbit was produced from the ASA convention last week in Orlando. Nothing much worth blogging about but I did come across an interesting abstract that was picked up by the popular press
Newsweek writes:
“This week, Columbia University researchers presented a study at the annual
meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists showing a possible link
between exposure to anesthesia and behavioral and developmental disorders in
young children.”
This unpublished abstract is an unfortunate instance of exactly what is wrong with the popular press. First of all, in my humble opinion, nothing but either large double-blind randomized controlled trials or meta-analyses should EVER be reported on in the popular press…much less a piddly abstract. It’s a joke to even attempt to derive meaningful information from an unpublished abstract with many, many flaws. Not Columbia’s fault it was picked up, just bad reporting. Fear sells, I guess. But that’s just my opinion.
Now does this have any relevance to clinical practice and providing anesthesia to pediatrics? Much remains to be elucidated about the effects of anesthesia on the littlest patients of ours. There is an excellent editorial in this months Anesthesiology addressing this very issue here.
I’m not ready to alter my practice at least not according to my evidence-based approach to things. Feel free to differ.
