The Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists

Hopefully this edition of SOCCA Interchange you well and enjoying summer. There has been considerable discussion and deliberation by the leadership of SOCCA that will be of interest.

Leaders of academic anesthesiology organizations have recognized that there is a need to conduct large pragmatic trials in order to answer important questions in anesthesiology-related research. Although there are several successful anesthesiology clinical trial networks around the world, there is no collaborative network in the United States. There are several factors that enable anesthesiology researchers today to conduct large and efficient trials, in line with recommendations of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Sean Josephs, MD is an Associate Professor of Clinical Anesthesia at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH. He is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.

Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy is a promising novel cancer treatment modality recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for relapsed/refractory B cell liquid tumors. Though its use is currently limited to a few designated centers across the US, if this line of therapy continues to deliver on the hype and new indications continue to arise as expected, it is likely that in the coming years it will be coming to a hospital (and an ICU) near you.

The National Board of Echocardiography (NBE) is ready to administer the very first edition of the Examination of Special Competence in Critical Care Echocardiography (CCEeXAM).

Have you visited SOCCA’s Job Board recently? Recent listings include positions with Anesthesia Associates of Morristown, New Jersey; American Anesthesiology of Atlanta, Georgia; and Midwest Physician Anesthesia Services of Columbus, Ohio.

If you have an interesting case report, an idea for a pro-con discussion, a review idea, or an opinion on a recently published article, please submit your proposal/article to Vivian Abalama, CAE, at vabalama@iars.org on or before September 10, 2018. If your article is chosen for the newsletter, we will contact you for editing and formatting. Thank you.

SOCCA wants to hear from you! We’ll be collecting feedback on how SOCCA can better serve its members. Keep on the lookout for the member survey—it’s coming out in July and one survey participant will be awarded a free 2019 Annual Meeting registration!

Happy New Year and I hope you are keeping warm! I’d like to take this column to introduce some of the activities and tools that SOCCA members can look forward to as this (surprisingly) cold winter turns to Spring. You may first notice that this newsletter (formerly the Interchange) has a new format! Instead of that stodgy old pdf (that few people read), we have now moved into a platform accessible from your computer, handheld, or even Anesthesia workstation. This platform is more dynamic and flexible, allows better integration of online content, is more closely aligned with our website and Twitter page, and (hopefully) more fun to read.

“Part of this complete breakfast.” This is the closing line of nearly every breakfast food commercial since at least the mid-1980s. The final scene universally depicts two mainstays: the product, and a cup of orange juice. In popular culture, citrus fruits are crucial to balanced nutrition and provide essential vitamin C. Colloquially, this nutrient is well known to stave off scurvy; but, medically, it has far more powerful potential as a tool to combat the sequelae of infection.