The ability to administer anesthesia is one of the greatest advancements of modern medicine. Medical teams would not have the ability to safely perform a wide variety of procedures without it.

More than 230 million major surgeries occur annually worldwide with nearly 40 million anesthesia procedures  conducted each year in the USA alone.

Anesthesia administration and maintenance has made great strides since its infancy centuries ago. Among these improvements is a most crucial component – patient safety. Patient safety is paramount in all aspects of medicine and medical care, but there is a particular concern for safety and injury prevention in the perioperative setting where the patient is often exposed to significant risk. 

The anesthesia professional is the only practitioner involved with the total medication process of prescribing, preparing, dispensing, and administering the medications without the advantage of an extra check of other health care professionals such as pharmacists or nurses. Additionally, many of the drugs used in anesthesia are high-risk drugs with a narrow therapeutic index which contributes to the potential for a harmful medication error to occur. 

Medication errors in the operating room are not uncommon and most are considered preventable. According to an infographic published in Anesthesiology on January 2016, 5.3% of Advert Drug Events (ADEs), an event in which a patient is harmed or injured due to interventional drugs, are found in perioperative settings.

Interestingly, researchers found similar medication error rates or near miss rates across the globe, indicating a shared problem and concern of the profession. 

According to a study published in Anesthesiology in January 2016, the most frequently occurring errors were miscalculations of dose, concentration or infusion rates, syringe or vial swaps, additional or missed dose(s). In the studies evaluated, the harm from these errors was found to be low; however, the authors did review a worrisome number of case studies that reported potentially lethal or lethal errors, these included: wrong route, dilution or concentration errors, pump programming errors, allergic reaction of a known allergic drug and failure to flush lines after drug administration. 

Other anesthesia safety challenges include infections, improper intravenous fluid regulation ineffective post- op pain management, and documentation errors.

Hospital administrations and their staffs are working diligently to minimize the mistakes involved with anesthesia. Through a combination of safety protocols, changes in medical processes, and improvements in medical technology, patients will hopefully face less risk than ever before.