What makes office-based anesthesia different?
Currently, only a few states and the District of Columbia require the same standards and regulations in doctors’ offices as they do in hospitals and surgical centers. The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) has developed comprehensive guidelines for office-based anesthesia and is urging states to adopt these same guidelines as regulations to protect all patients. During the past 20 years, anesthesia-related deaths have dropped dramatically from one in 10,000 anesthetics delivered to one in 400,000 for outpatient procedures, due to the constant efforts of anesthesiologists to make patient safety their highest priority. Today, more than 90 percent of all anesthetics in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers are directly administered or medically supervised by anesthesiologists. Anesthesiologists are also actively involved in designing guidelines and regulations to ensure patient safety in office surgery situations. Patient Safety: Complications from anesthesia have declined dr
There is one fundamental and very important difference between office-based anesthesia and receiving anesthesia in a hospital or ambulatory surgical center. The strict, well-defined standards and regulations that keep surgery and anesthesia very safe in hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers do not uniformly apply to physicians offices in the United States. Excerpt from the Planning Your Childbirth brochure www.asahq.org/patientEducation/childbirth.
