DAPM at Euroanaesthesia 2023 in Scotland

June 15, 2023 | Theodora Wingert, MD

The annual Euroanaesthesia Congress is one of the most well-recognized and influential international conferences in anesthesiology and critical care medicine. Each year, over 100 countries are represented, creating an unparalleled platform upon which physicians and scientists can share ideas, research, guidelines, innovation, and foster international collaboration. This year’s Congress was held in Glasgow, Scotland, on June 3-5, 2023, at the Scottish Event Campus Armadillo. 

The congress featured several learning tracks, including General Anesthesiology, Intensive Care Medicine, Regional Anesthesia, Obstetric Anesthesiology, Pediatric Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine, and Patient Safety. Several important and timely topics of interest included the following: prehabilitation before surgery, perioperative implications of sex and gender, reduction of the carbon footprint of anesthesia, intraoperative innovations in target-controlled infusion devices and fluid management, and lessons learned from international collaborative research efforts.

Maxime Cannesson, MD, PhD, spoke about pulse oximetry on a panel titled “Bits and Bolts—Insights into the Insides of Monitors for Anesthesiologists and Trainees.” While many take pulse oximetry for granted, Dr. Cannesson took listeners on a journey through some of the amazing history and physiology of the technology, as well as a taste of what the future may hold with the application of computational analysis to pulse oximetry.

This panel was moderated by Alexandre Joosten, MD, PhD, who will be joining the UCLA faculty in the fall. Dr. Joosten currently is an Assistant Professor at the Bicetre & Paul Brousse Hospitals in Paris, France. He is an internationally recognized researcher in goal-directed therapy strategies, noninvasive cardiac output monitoring devices, fluid therapy, and many other novel perioperative technologies.

Later that day, Dr. Cannesson and Theodora Wingert, MD, spoke on a panel titled “Intraoperative Hypotension and Outcomes.” Dr. Wingert spoke about “Intraoperative Hypotension and Outcomes in Pediatric Anesthesia.” During her talk, she discussed the high frequency of  hypotension during pediatric anesthesia and described her research and others as some of the few studies to evaluate associations between intraoperative hypotension and outcomes. She also emphasized the importance of continued research.

Dr. Cannesson spoke about his research in applying neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence, to predict intraoperative hypotension. Barak Cohen, MD, and Carolyn Weiniger, MB, ChB, both from Israel, spoke on the significantly worse outcomes associated with hypotension in noncardiac surgery and obstetric anesthesia. It was a great moment to see these different subspecialties come together to share their different perspectives and approaches to common concerns. The speakers were uniform in their call to action to work to understand the implications of perioperative hypotension and to improve our ability to prevent its occurrence.

There was some time for fun, too! Dr. Wingert and her youngest son Elliot had some time to enjoy the nearby Glasgow Science Center and some of the beautiful green parks in Glasgow. And Dr. Cannesson and Dr. Joosten were able to fit in some tennis matches on the grass courts in Kelvingrove Park.