News

Marc Giménez-Milà MD gimimarc@gmail.com   Anaesthesiologists working in critical care units, operating theatres and other areas such as gastrointestinal endoscopy and bronchoscopy have relied on newly published scientific material to approach patients suffering from COVID-19. Various safety measures, diagnostic methods and pharmacological treatments have been reported throughout the pandemic period with different and contradictory messages as more knowledge of the disease was gathered. I...

Carolina Mateus carolina_armateus@hotmail.com   My name is Carolina Mateus and I’m a 5th year resident of Centro Hospitalar do Porto, Portugal. I applied to the Trainee Exchange Programme in Barcelona for this reason (see photo). No, I’m just kidding (the rotation was from October to December!!!). Having done almost all of my residency in Portugal, I found that something was missing. Despite Portugal being an excellent country with great hospitals and mentors, I felt the need for someth...

Gabriel M. Gurman, MD Chief Editor gurman@bgu.ac.il   The current COVID-19 pandemic demands, once again, a serious review regarding the shortage of anaesthesia manpower. The tremendous increase in the number of ventilated patients created a situation in which more anaesthesiologists have been assigned to the intensive care units leaving other professional tasks, at least partially, uncovered. But the shortage of anaesthesiologists is a perennial problem. Put simply, five billion people all...

Upper Extremity Regional Anesthesia: Essentials of Our Current Understanding, 2008 Neal JM, Gerancher JC, Hebl JR, et al. Reg Anesth Pain Med 2009;34:134–70 Bernardo Matias matias.bernardo@gmail.com   Regional anaesthesia is a field of our speciality that has dramatically developed over recent years, in particular peripheral nerve blocks, with the widespread use of ultrasound for nerve localisation, and the evolution of both single shot and continuous techniques, including growing evidenc...

Vojislava Neskovic, Md, PhD, DEAA vojkan@gmail.com   On the March 2nd 2020 World Health Organization has declared that COVID-19 has become a pandemic disease. In Serbia, on March 15th, the State Government has declared the State of Emergency regarding the outbreak of the disease. This action has led to the implementation of the very strict measures of control and prevention of the disease spread. Although the majority of patients are known to have mild illness and recover uneventfully, it i...

Julia T. Herrera1, Gonzalo Tamayo1, María L. Hernández-Sanz1, Carlos Ferrando2,3, for the COVID-19 Spanish ICU Network*. marietahersan@gmail.com 1 Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, Hospital Universitario Cruces, Spain. 2 Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, Hospital Clínic, Institut D’investigació August Pi i Sunyer, Barcelona, Spain; 3 CIBER de Enfermedades Respiratorias, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain;   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to...

Dr Monica Sandu monnique19@yahoo.it   I am anaesthesia and intensive care specialist working in Bucharest, Romania. In April 2020, I volunteered to work for 3 weeks in northern Italy, one of the most affected areas in Europe during the COVID-19 outbreak. It was the month of March when this terrible new viral illness had started spreading throughout Europe. The speed with which COVID-19 was making people ill and taking lives was incomprehensible. By far, northern Italy had been struck the ha...

Elena Sandoval MD, FEBCTS. esandova@clinic.cat   The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to rapidly adapt to new ways of working, which may have been quite different from our usual practice. Our hospital (Hospital Clínic Barcelona) is a bit different, as it has several independent intensive care units led by specific medical/surgical specialities. The pandemic has converted these “independent kingdoms” into COVID-ICUs and it has forced hospital leaders to create “new ICUs” for...

This is the second collection of papers and letters with subjects related to the topic of the COVID-19 pandemics. We are pleased that our members and readers answered our call and sent their impressions and feelings produced by this worldwide health problem, with so many socio-economic impacts. By reading the enclosed material one can get the right picture of an epidemic affecting every single country and community. I would like to thank all those who decided to share with us their experience,...

Dr. Antonio Villalonga Morales antoniovillalonga@gmail.com   I am a Spanish anaesthesiologist, who has lived in Kinshasa (DR Congo) since June 2019, and I work at the Monkole Hospital. Several friends have asked why in Africa there are far fewer cases of sickness and apparent lower risk of death from coronavirus. The answers to these questions have no known scientific evidence yet, but I believe there are several factors that may be involved. The different behaviour of the COVID-19 pandemic...