The Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists

Fall 2018

President’s Message
by Daniel R. Brown, MD, PhD, FCCM

In an environment where we are frequently asked to provide survey responses, our recent SOCCA survey was an outlier. In the positive sense. 161 of you provided feedback that will help shape the future of SOCCA. While 53% of you were satisfied with SOCCA, we clearly have areas in which we can improve. General themes included the need for ongoing educational content delivered in various forms (e.g., on line content for just in time use) as well as professional development resources. It is also clear that there is considerable desire by members to become more involved in SOCCA activities.

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Editor’s Message
by Kevin W. Hatton, MD, FCCM

Hello!! It is my pleasure to introduce myself to you as the newest editor of our SOCCA Interchange Newsletter. I have been a part of the Newsletter now for a number of years, writing and editing a wide variety of interesting and informative pieces under the direction of previous editors that have mentored me in many different ways.

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Critical Care Pain Management in the Era of Enhanced Recovery and the War on Opioids
by Christina Boncyk, MD and C. Patrick Henson, DO

Chronic pain syndromes are a persistent problem in the United States, with conservative estimates suggesting a cost $560 to $635 billion dollars annually. Chronic pain following intensive care unit (ICU) survival is difficult to quantify, as patient populations vary across hospital centers and within different ICU settings; however, current evidence demonstrates that anywhere from 12-60% of patients remain affected by chronic pain at 6-months to a year following ICU admission, which contributes to a significant portion of diagnoses nationally.

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Defining and Defending a Blood Pressure in the Operating Room & Intensive Care Unit
by Ashish K. Khanna MD., FCCP., FCCM

Despite surgical patients presenting to the operating room (OR) sicker than ever before, the intraoperative period has, paradoxically, become far safer. Current estimates of intraoperative mortality are less than 1 in 100,000 patients. However, 30-day postoperative mortality is still significant at 1-2%, a fact that suggests that if 30-day postop mortality were considered a disease, it would be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

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Sometimes, It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination
by Jordan Brand, M.D.

The medical field has finally begun to recognize the impact of job satisfaction and burnout. While much attention has been paid to how changes in the work environment affect this state of affairs, less thought has been given to how variables outside the hospital or clinic could impact physician well-being. This is particularly relevant to critical care medicine: in Medscape’s 2018 Physician Lifestyle Report, which polled over 15,000 physicians across 29 specialties, a whopping 48% of critical care physicians reported feeling burned out.

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“Did You See This?”
by Zdravka Zafirova, M.D.

The European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) recently published a consensus statement and clinical recommendations regarding the fluid management of neuro-intensive care patients (NIC), including comatose (GCS < 9) patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), high-grade aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), severe arterial ischemic stroke (AIS) or intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).

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Membership Committee
by Stephen D. Surgenor, MD and Carlee Clark, M.D.

The SOCCA Membership Committee would like to welcome all of our current members, as well as, new Critical Care Anesthesiology faculty and fellows to the 2019 academic year! Overall, our current membership remains strong. Maintaining a strong and engaged membership is important to the long-term health of SOCCA. We’ve been able to maintain this strong membership level because of you!

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A Brief Conversation with…Jeffery S. Vender
by Craig S. Jabaley, MD

Jeff Vender, MD, MCCM, MBA is the Emeritus, Harris Family Foundation Chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois and a Clinical Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School Of Medicine. Dr. Vender was the recipient of the SOCCA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

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Call for Articles

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 review the submission guidelines and submit your proposal/article to Vivian Abalama, CAE, IOM at vabalama@iars.org on or before December 3, 2018. If your article is chosen for the newsletter, we will contact you for editing and formatting.

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