Anesthesia Patient Safety Podcast

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  #324 Endotracheal Tubes Are Not All The Same 15.09.2026 14dk

  Your airway cart might look fully stocked, but one quiet change can reshape an entire intubation: a different endotracheal tube brand, a new material formulation, a redesigned cuff, or changes in diameter measurements. We take a close, practical look at endotracheal tube materials and design, and why supply chain instability and product discontinuations can turn a “routine” device into a patient safety risk, particularly for neonates, infants, and other pediatric patients where millimeters ma...
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  #323 How Technology Can Speed Training And Strengthen Anesthesia Patient Safety 08.09.2026 20dk

  Your first day in anesthesia can be overwhelming with so many numbers, dials, alarms, and decisions that all land at once, and the stakes are high. We sit down with Dr. Lahiru Amaratanga to ask a simple question with big implications for anesthesia patient safety: how can technology make clinicians learn faster without losing the human touch that keeps patients safe? We dig into practical education innovation, starting with AI coaching and moving toward a “trainee dashboard” that could track...
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  #322 Designing Safer Anesthesia 01.09.2026 29dk

  The fastest way to improve anesthesia patient safety is often to stop asking people to be perfect and start redesigning the world they work in. Dr. Alli Bechtel sits down with Dr. Lahiru Amaratunge, a consultant anesthetist in Melbourne, to unpack how human factors engineering, smarter workflows, and better training systems can prevent harm before it happens. We trace Lahiru’s path from supervising medical students to building the ABCs of Anesthesia YouTube channel and the Anesthesia Collect...
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  #321 Safer Dental Anesthesia, PART 2 25.08.2026 27dk

  A dental office can feel low-stakes until the moment it isn’t. We pick up our conversation with Dr. Rita Agarwal to talk about the real-world safety gaps in dental sedation and dental anesthesia, especially for children, and the practical steps that can prevent a routine procedure from turning into a catastrophe. We walk through the exact questions families can ask before scheduling deep sedation or general anesthesia: What medications are being used? What level of sedation is planned, and h...
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  #320 Dental Anesthesia Safety Gaps, PART 1 18.08.2026 38dk

  A dental chair shouldn’t be a place where safety standards slip, yet that’s the reality Dr. Rita Agarwal lays out with unsettling clarity. We talk through why office-based dental sedation and dental anesthesia can slide into dangerous territory: unclear definitions, uneven training, inconsistent monitoring requirements, and a system that often can’t even tell you how many serious complications occur. Dr. Agarwal, a pediatric anesthesiologist and longtime patient safety advocate, traces how d...
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  #319 Four New Studies That Change Daily Anesthesia Safety Decisions 11.08.2026 15dk

  Ketamine for emergency intubation has a reputation for hemodynamic stability, but does the best evidence back that up when your patient is truly sick? Today, we walk through four fresh research summaries that sharpen day-to-day anesthesia patient safety decisions, from airway management in shock and sepsis to the way teams and technology shape outcomes in the OR. First, we break down a large randomized controlled trial comparing ketamine versus etomidate for tracheal intubation in critically...
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  #318 Air Embolism Alert 04.08.2026 16dk

  Air embolism is one of those complications that feels impossible right up until it happens fast, quietly, and with life-altering consequences. We walk through the FDA’s 2025 Early Alert on the Watchman access system for left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) procedures and connect the dots between device exchange steps, transseptal puncture, and the anesthetic choice that can put patients at risk. We talk about why the shift toward sedation and spontaneous ventilation in structural heart pro...
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  #317 Setting Expectations For Safer Cesarean Anesthesia with Dr. Ruthi Landau Revisited, PART 2 28.07.2026 30dk

  Many patients walk into labor and delivery picturing a birth day, not an operating room, and that mismatch is where preventable suffering can start. We sit down with Dr. Ruthi Landau to get practical about cesarean delivery anesthesia, with a focus on patient safety, respectful communication, and what to do when a patient says, “This isn’t comfortable.” We dig into why setting expectations during neuraxial consent matters, and why active management of labor epidurals is not optional when an ...
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  #316 Safer C-Section Pain Control Revisited, PART 1 21.07.2026 34dk

  If you’ve ever heard “it’s just pressure” during a C-section and felt your gut twist, you’re not alone, and it may be a patient safety issue hiding in plain sight. We sit down with Dr. Ruthi Landau, the Virginia Apgar Professor of Anesthesiology and Director of Obstetric Anesthesiology at Columbia University, to get practical about what patients actually feel during cesarean delivery anesthesia and what we can do when those sensations become uncomfortable. We talk through why labeling sensat...
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  #315 Pain During Cesarean Delivery 14.07.2026 16dk

  Pain during cesarean delivery is not “just pressure,” and it is not rare. We dig into why inadequate pain control during C-section remains underrecognized even as patient-reported data suggest it may be one of the most common anesthetic complications in obstetric anesthesia, with consequences that can reach far beyond the operating room including PTSD, postpartum depression, disrupted bonding, and lasting distress about birth. We walk through what the research has measured so far (conversion...
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  #314 PACU Corneal Abrasion Protocol 07.07.2026 14dk

  Eye pain in the PACU can feel like an automatic page to ophthalmology, but it doesn’t have to be. We break down postoperative corneal abrasions on the show today. We share practical, clinician-ready guidance drawn from a multidisciplinary PACU corneal abrasion protocol developed with anesthesiology and ophthalmology expertise. You’ll hear exactly what to ask and look for when a patient reports blurry vision or a gritty sensation, the red flag that changes everything (vision loss), and ...
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  #313 Individualized Multimodal Analgesia 30.06.2026 17dk

  “Opioid-sparing” sounds like an automatic win until you look closely at what replaces the opioids. We take on one of the toughest questions in modern anesthesiology: how do we reduce opioid-related harm without trading it for medication interactions, kidney injury, bleeding risk, rebound pain, or poorly controlled postoperative pain? We break down what individualized multimodal analgesia really means in day-to-day anesthesia practice. That starts before the first dose is ordered, with a preo...
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  #312 Hantavirus Readiness For Anesthesia Teams 23.06.2026 15dk

  A virus can feel “far away” right up until it lands in a preop bay with a fever, abdominal pain, and a story that only makes sense weeks later. We walk through what anesthesia, perioperative, and critical care teams need to know about hantavirus, why the incubation period (often 7 to 42 days) complicates detection, and how the Andes virus changes the conversation because it is the only hantavirus known to spread person to person. We start with the basics that matter at the bedside: common tr...
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  #311 From Cable Chaos To One Step Airway Access 16.06.2026 13dk

  Twenty-two steps to reach an airway is not a quirky workflow problem, it’s a patient safety problem. We’re turning our attention to a neuro-interventional radiology (Neuro IR) suite where cables, monitors, and a poorly positioned anesthesia machine created a cramped, high-friction non-operating room anesthesia (NORA) environment. Joined by John Edwards, CRNA, we unpack how a real-world quality improvement project at the University of Kentucky Medical Center turned staff frustration into an ev...
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  #310 Moisture Matters In Anesthesia Circuits 09.06.2026 13dk

  Condensation in an anesthesia circuit looks harmless until it starts skewing flow sensor readings or creating the kind of warm, wet environment where microbes can thrive. We pick up the story after the investigation into moisture and mold concerns in GE operating room ventilators, then move straight into the questions clinicians asked most: which filters matter, how low-flow anesthesia changes the moisture equation, and what “moisture mitigation” actually means at the bedside. We walk throug...
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  #309 Mold Risk In Anesthesia Workstations 02.06.2026 15dk

  Black particles in a breathing system are the kind of finding that makes every anesthesia professional stop and look twice. We’re sharing what a large health system uncovered after concerns for mold and moisture accumulation surfaced inside certain GE Healthcare anesthesia workstations used in operating rooms, especially during longer cases and in humid conditions. What started with a routine inspection quickly scaled into a broad audit of OR ventilators, a review of internal moisture points,...
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  #308 We Break Down The Latest Evidence On Safer Anesthesia Care 26.05.2026 14dk

  Delirium, pain, and prolonged ventilation can feel like “expected” bumps in perioperative care until you look closely at the data. We walk through four recent APSF In the Literature reviews and pull out what’s actually actionable for anesthesia patient safety right now, with clear numbers and real-world implications. First, we dig into a randomized controlled trial of S-ketamine for elderly patients undergoing total hip or total knee arthroplasty under neuraxial anesthesia. With general anes...
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  #307 Perioperative Safety In Low And Middle-Income Countries 19.05.2026 17dk

  The world has the knowledge to make anesthesia safer, but too often it’s the basics that are missing where the need is greatest. We’re talking about perioperative patient safety in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where a smaller share of surgical volume can still carry a massive share of perioperative death and disability. That imbalance isn’t inevitable, and it isn’t solved by one tool or one training course. It changes when systems change. We walk through the biggest system...
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  #306 Venezuelan Ancestry Anesthesia Alert 12.05.2026 14dk

  Catastrophic neurologic injury after a routine anesthetic is the kind of signal that stops you in your tracks, and that’s exactly why we’re talking about new perioperative recommendations for patients with maternal Venezuelan ancestry. We’ve seen reports of otherwise healthy adults and children who deteriorated after general anesthesia, with sevoflurane appearing repeatedly in the documented events. That pattern has led the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Society for Pediatric A...
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  #305 Lead Infinitely 05.05.2026 15dk

  The fastest way to weaken patient safety isn’t a missing checklist, it’s a team that stops trusting each other. We dig into “infinite anesthesia” and the next step, “leading infinitely,” a practical relational leadership approach designed to build psychological safety, empathy, humility, and civility in perioperative care. We share why anesthesia professionals are uniquely positioned to lead across the full health system: we work at the intersection of surgeons, proceduralists, nurses, and h...