CORONA DEL MAR, Calif., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- An article in this month's
official newsletter of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) reads:
" ... Office-based anesthesia (OBA) requires a different approach than
that used in a hospital and an ambulatory surgicenter: not all anesthesia
providers have the skill, knowledge base or personality to deal with this
environment." -- Rebecca Twersky, MD
To this, Homer Simpson would have responded. "Doh."
More than a decade ago, the ASA held quite a different position. There
were no lectures given at the annual meetings specific to office-based
anesthesia and most definitely no space devoted to OBA in the ASA Newsletter.
They were in adamant denial about OBA's very existence.
Why, one might ask?
When asked if he believed there was a difference between anesthesia given
in a surgicenter compared with that given in an office-based setting, in 1995,
noted anesthesiologist, Paul F. White PhD, MD, stated, "If it's not done in
the hospital isn't it all ambulatory?"
Staggered by this naive response from White, one of anesthesiology's most
prominent thinkers, Dr. Barry Friedberg was inspired to create the Society for
Office Anesthesiologists (SOFA) in 1996. Independent of Friedberg's effort in
California, Marc Koch, MD, in New York, created the Office Anesthesia Society
(OASIS), and Charles Laurito, MD in Chicago, created the Society for Office
Based Anesthesia (SOBA). The societies, which merged in 1998, were all
non-profit, educational societies created in response to the need to recognize
the difference in the office-based environment. Clearly, OBA was a nascent
national movement. Although the ASA recognized SOBA, they were very slow to
appreciate its significance for patient safety.
Another wake-up call came in 2004 when Olivia Goldsmith, author of The
First Wives' Club, died as a result of anesthesia while attempting to have a
chin lift at Lenox Hill hospital in Manhattan. One month later another patient
also died from anesthesia while attempting to have liposuction of her neck.
Cambridge University Press editor, Marc Strauss, asked why the
anesthesiologists hadn't read 'the book.' He quickly discovered that there was
no textbook concerning anesthesia for cosmetic surgery. Strauss subsequently
tagged Friedberg for the task of producing such a textbook.
When informed he had been selected first of the then 40,000
anesthesiologists in the US, Friedberg asked 'Why me?' He was told that he was
the only one doing anything different for cosmetic surgery anesthesia and
writing about it.
In April 2007, Cambridge University Press published Friedberg's Anesthesia
in Cosmetic Surgery. The book has received positive reviews by the Journal of
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Anesthesia & Analgesia, and Dermatologic
Surgery.
A Google search for 'office based anesthesia' lists Dr. Friedberg's web
site as #6 & 10 (non-sponsored) of 254,000 sites. A similar Yahoo search lists
this web site as #9 & 10 (non-sponsored) of 3,820,000 sites. More information
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