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The aim of PANDOS is to document perioperative opioid use and its safety in Europe and to describe its association with adverse events and persistent pain. This is a call for expression of interest for this one-week international, prospective, observational cohort study. Our goal is to include as many hospitals as possible in Europe. We would like to include at least ten countries with at least ten hospitals per country.     Currently, we have received expressions of interest from Belg...

Chief editor note: We are pleased to host in this issue a paper from Colombia, which touches an important aspect of our life as physicians, namely financial independence. We encourage our readers and members to send us their comments and thoughts on this topic. Sebastian Amaya Universidad El Bosque Colombian School of Medicine, Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Interest Group UEB, Byron Rosero Department of Anaesthesiology, Clinica San José de Cúcuta, Cúcuta, Colombia, Anaesthesiologists ar...

Chief editor note: We are pleased to host another paper from a very distinguished speaker at our next Euroanaesthesia 2021, this time about a topic of a special interest, due to the significant changes in the world climate. Dr Jane Muret Chief, Department of Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Institute Curie Paris, France jane.muret@curie.fr   The past fifty years have seen unprecedented global improvements in life expectancy, maternal and child mortality, and education, coupled with falli...

Dr Cheah Kean Seng Department of Anaesthesia & Intensive Care. Tallaght University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. Email: dkscheah@gmail.com   Abstract The use of laryngeal mask airway (LMA) devices became common practice in anaesthesia since their first use in 1987. Newer generations of LMA from various manufacturers improvised the features for safety, ease of insertion and various advantages over first-generation LMA. However, using LMA in anaesthesia is not without risk of complications a...

Gabriel M. Gurman, MD Chief Editor gurman@bgu.ac.il This time I did not need to go searching in the literature, because what I do know, and write here, comes from tens of years spent in the operating room and near the critically ill patient. Not long ago I touched on this subject, but I have the feeling that there is more to say on this subject. Anaesthesiology is one of the youngest specialities in medicine. It is true, the first known ether anaesthesia was performed almost two centuries ago, b...

The cold truth about hypothermic therapy post-cardiac arrest. Dr Cheah Kean Seng Tallaght University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland dkscheah@gmail.com Long we have been taught that patients who have sustained an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest should be placed under hypothermic therapy in the hospital for a better outcome. This eventually became the backbone of post-cardiac arrest care for years in practice. In fact, every hospital has its own protocol on post-cardiac arrest care and hypothermia post-...

Letter to editor Tzima Maria Trainee Anaesthesiologist martzi88@yahoo.gr Mendonça et al1 recently published their work on intra-operative esmolol administration in relation to pain treatment following mastectomy. In their work, as a primary outcome, they assess postoperative pain and as secondary, postoperative nausea and vomiting(PONV), blood pressure, heart rate, Bispectral Index(BIS), use of anaesthetics, analgesic medication and time to emergence differences between a group of patients admi...

Chief editor note: we continue our tradition of inserting, here and in the next issues, some abstracts of paper to be presented at the next Euroanaesthesia, December 2021 Sean Coeckelenbergh, M.D.1, Alexandre Joosten, M.D. Ph.D.1,2 joosten-alexandre@hotmail.com Automatisation and robotics are all around us. Self-driving cars are a reality, aeroplane autopilot has been the norm for years, and even the thermostats in our operating rooms use a closed-loop circuit to maintain an often freezing cold...

Peter Biro peter.biro@usz.ch I have to confess that I am a person prone to nostalgic feelings, which certainly apply also for my professional life. However, those warm remembrances that come over me when thinking on the meanwhile rarely used succinylcholine, may have definitely a justifiable reason in some of the unique features of this drug. First, let’s see how this disgraceful abandonment of one of the most widely used anaesthetics came about. Succinylcholine found its way into clinica...

Gabriel M. Gurman, MD Chief Editor I would dare to say that lately, I became an expert in this topic. Sixteen years since my retirement from my half-a-century of daily clinical and didactic activity I  have the certitude that during that over a long period I have accumulated a large experience regarding the life of a retiree, or as some cynical people use to say, “life after death”. I have spent all those years as an anaesthesiologist, almost fully involved in critical care, but being prese...